I'm showing my age admittedly but I often thought that a K1600GT would be a nice thing to have should the finances ever allow.
After tackling the insanity that is Saturday morning traffic at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, I made it to the bike show and headed for the Beemer stand then waited patiently while a portly foreign gentleman camped on the 1600 and examined every electronic device, and they are numerous, on the bike.
Seat finally vacant, with much anticipation I hopped aboard. Horrors, the cockpit is so cramped! Like unbelieveably restrictive for a bike this size. I would need the seat hump moved back about 50mm (so bye bye pillion), the seat raised about the same and the bars, which are the usual BMW tourer Texas longhorn variety moved forward about the same again. I'm not sure if this latter move could be done given the architecture of those bars. Certainly more involved than throwing a set of after-market Renthals or similar onto a Strom.
Disappointed I moseyed off and returned later to the Beemer stand to find a guy almost as tall as I am actually sitting up on the pillion seat, hands on the controls, exclaiming that this was where he would need to be sitting to feel comfortable on the bike! So it's not just me. I haven't seen in any of the reviews I've read that space was an issue with these bikes but it most surely is.
To restore my faith I took the Strom out today for what turned out to be a terrific ride through the Lockyer to see how Grantham's coming along, then up to Toowoomba, down through Warwick and Clifton and back home in time to join the family in celebrating my dear old mum's 95th birthday.
K1600GT? I think I just saved myself (an imaginary) forty grand!
After tackling the insanity that is Saturday morning traffic at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast, I made it to the bike show and headed for the Beemer stand then waited patiently while a portly foreign gentleman camped on the 1600 and examined every electronic device, and they are numerous, on the bike.
Seat finally vacant, with much anticipation I hopped aboard. Horrors, the cockpit is so cramped! Like unbelieveably restrictive for a bike this size. I would need the seat hump moved back about 50mm (so bye bye pillion), the seat raised about the same and the bars, which are the usual BMW tourer Texas longhorn variety moved forward about the same again. I'm not sure if this latter move could be done given the architecture of those bars. Certainly more involved than throwing a set of after-market Renthals or similar onto a Strom.
Disappointed I moseyed off and returned later to the Beemer stand to find a guy almost as tall as I am actually sitting up on the pillion seat, hands on the controls, exclaiming that this was where he would need to be sitting to feel comfortable on the bike! So it's not just me. I haven't seen in any of the reviews I've read that space was an issue with these bikes but it most surely is.
To restore my faith I took the Strom out today for what turned out to be a terrific ride through the Lockyer to see how Grantham's coming along, then up to Toowoomba, down through Warwick and Clifton and back home in time to join the family in celebrating my dear old mum's 95th birthday.
K1600GT? I think I just saved myself (an imaginary) forty grand!