I’m new to this forum as a member but I have been a voyeur for many years. Last year I switched my big bike from the predominantly orange variety to become, at first rather reluctantly, a tosser. Not wanting to do things by half I went full in with what is arguably the ugliest bike on the road but I like quirky things and one should never judge a book by its cover ! So I found myself with a 2025 GS 1300 Adventure ASA Trophy with the auto up/ down ride height thingy and adaptive cruise control.
The first question on everyone’s lips when I tell them it’s and automated gear shift with no clutch is “ how is it going to cope with switchback corners like in the Alps because I like to feather the clutch on those corners ?”. Having just returned from a 2300 mile trip to the alps around Bardoneccia I now have the answer to that question.
A bit about me. I’m 63 years old, been riding since I was 12 and started off schoolboy scrambling on peaky two strokes. Since those early off road days I’ve done the odd green lanes and a couple of Rally Moto events on my KTM 690 enduro (which I still have) but i’m definitely not an off road riding god. I’m 6’3” and 18 stone.
The Trip - Accompanied by two friends, one on a 21 plate 1250 GSA and the other on a 24 plate 1250 GSA we set off from Cheshire and blasted it down pretty well all the way to Grenoble on motorways at 130 - 140 kph over two days. The 1300 consistently used 2 -3 less fuel ( around 10%) than the 1250’s every time we filled up and that continued right through the trip. Adaptive cruise coupled with ASA meant I had my legs up on top of the crash bars before we’d got out on to the motorway slip road. We soon hit the mountains and my first try at testing out the switch back roads with the ASA. As we’d all been traveling in ECO mode I just left it in that and “D” (fully auto) to see how it performed. Impeccably is the only word I can use. We were all tired after two long days so we weren’t pushing on but it made life so easy. We got to Camping Gran Bosco had a pizza and went to bed early for a good nights kip ready for the next challenge the following day. We’ve done this area previously, last time for me on a KTM 1190 Adventre r, so I was keen to see how the BMW coped with a bit of off road. So we headed up to the Colle della Finestre from the Northern side heading South. It starts off very narrow paved roads with tight, steep switchbacks. I tried out ECO, ROAD & DYNAMIC modes over the first couple of miles and settled on ROAD for this section, Still in Auto on the gearbox to see if it could cope, I couldn’t believe how easy it was with the ASA, it just picks the right gear and never once gave me the feeling it was going to do something odd. We then get to the gravel which starts off fairly easy with sweeping corners but soon gets to tight loose gravel switchbacks. I’d not even changed to Enduro mode just left it in Auto & Road mode. It was perfect, that’s all I can say. I thought, okay let’s see how it performs standing on the tight loose corners as that’s a bit more scary if it goes wrong. Again it performed impeccably.
Over the next few days we did some faster paved alpine passes. Again I tried all the modes and found that Road was good 99% of the time. On a couple of occasions going uphill into a sharp switchback I overrode the auto and knocked it down an extra gear, on both occasions I’d just closed the throttle to slow down rather than brake hard and I guess the bike couldn’t see what I could see. In Dynamic mode it’s a lot more “racey” and holds the rats a lot more going up, likewise when slowing it’s blipping and going down the box a lot more aggressively.
Before the trip was fully expecting to put the bike in Manual mode throughout the Alps and using the back brake to drag it into the tight corners. It truly is amazing how great this thing performs.
So next time someone asks how it copes with Alpine switchbacks I’ll know the answer. WOW !
Ps one more thing. Filtering through traffic - we had to filter for about 5 miles on the M25 and M5 M6 junction on the way back and it was absolutely no issue, in fact it was easier as I only had to concentrate on what cars were doing and covering the front brake.
The first question on everyone’s lips when I tell them it’s and automated gear shift with no clutch is “ how is it going to cope with switchback corners like in the Alps because I like to feather the clutch on those corners ?”. Having just returned from a 2300 mile trip to the alps around Bardoneccia I now have the answer to that question.
A bit about me. I’m 63 years old, been riding since I was 12 and started off schoolboy scrambling on peaky two strokes. Since those early off road days I’ve done the odd green lanes and a couple of Rally Moto events on my KTM 690 enduro (which I still have) but i’m definitely not an off road riding god. I’m 6’3” and 18 stone.
The Trip - Accompanied by two friends, one on a 21 plate 1250 GSA and the other on a 24 plate 1250 GSA we set off from Cheshire and blasted it down pretty well all the way to Grenoble on motorways at 130 - 140 kph over two days. The 1300 consistently used 2 -3 less fuel ( around 10%) than the 1250’s every time we filled up and that continued right through the trip. Adaptive cruise coupled with ASA meant I had my legs up on top of the crash bars before we’d got out on to the motorway slip road. We soon hit the mountains and my first try at testing out the switch back roads with the ASA. As we’d all been traveling in ECO mode I just left it in that and “D” (fully auto) to see how it performed. Impeccably is the only word I can use. We were all tired after two long days so we weren’t pushing on but it made life so easy. We got to Camping Gran Bosco had a pizza and went to bed early for a good nights kip ready for the next challenge the following day. We’ve done this area previously, last time for me on a KTM 1190 Adventre r, so I was keen to see how the BMW coped with a bit of off road. So we headed up to the Colle della Finestre from the Northern side heading South. It starts off very narrow paved roads with tight, steep switchbacks. I tried out ECO, ROAD & DYNAMIC modes over the first couple of miles and settled on ROAD for this section, Still in Auto on the gearbox to see if it could cope, I couldn’t believe how easy it was with the ASA, it just picks the right gear and never once gave me the feeling it was going to do something odd. We then get to the gravel which starts off fairly easy with sweeping corners but soon gets to tight loose gravel switchbacks. I’d not even changed to Enduro mode just left it in Auto & Road mode. It was perfect, that’s all I can say. I thought, okay let’s see how it performs standing on the tight loose corners as that’s a bit more scary if it goes wrong. Again it performed impeccably.
Over the next few days we did some faster paved alpine passes. Again I tried all the modes and found that Road was good 99% of the time. On a couple of occasions going uphill into a sharp switchback I overrode the auto and knocked it down an extra gear, on both occasions I’d just closed the throttle to slow down rather than brake hard and I guess the bike couldn’t see what I could see. In Dynamic mode it’s a lot more “racey” and holds the rats a lot more going up, likewise when slowing it’s blipping and going down the box a lot more aggressively.
Before the trip was fully expecting to put the bike in Manual mode throughout the Alps and using the back brake to drag it into the tight corners. It truly is amazing how great this thing performs.
So next time someone asks how it copes with Alpine switchbacks I’ll know the answer. WOW !
Ps one more thing. Filtering through traffic - we had to filter for about 5 miles on the M25 and M5 M6 junction on the way back and it was absolutely no issue, in fact it was easier as I only had to concentrate on what cars were doing and covering the front brake.
