VOLUME 58 ISSUE 6 FEBRUARY 9, 2021 P91
I
'll never forget having a BMW S 1000
XR for 18 months in 2016-'17. I used
that beast to cover over 10,000 miles
of everything from cruising to the shops,
to weekend blasts into the country and a
couple of trips to Laguna Seca, and was
totally smitten with it—I still am.
So, I'll admit to being rather surprised
when BMW announced at the EICMA Show
in 2019 that they were bringing out a smaller
XR in an attempt to get new bums on BMW
seats. At the time, I didn't really understand
why. BMW already had the F 850 R (which
later became the F 900, the same platform
of which is used to make up this XR vari-
ant), plus there are 13 other (count them)
GS models to choose from, so it's not like
the rider didn't have many other options on
which to spend his or her money.
I had the F 900 XR for a couple of
weeks to end 2020 (you can read Kit
Palmer's full launch report on the F 900 XR
here), and in that time it proved an ample
steed for the majority of tasks handed to it,
although there were a few frustrations
that bubbled through.
