FIRST RIDE
P56
2016 BMW R 1200 RS
as you ride, giving the optimal
suspension damping for a given
application. One issue with the
electronic suspension is that
should none of the settings suit
your style, it's impossible to find
a happy medium. The stadard
pre-set setting on the rear
shock is quite soft and the hard
setting increases spring preload
significantly, so if either of these
settings don't suit you, it might
be hard to tune the suspension
to your liking.
The arrival of forks and the
ditching of the telelever to the
RS has given it an altered per-
sonality. There's more weight
transfer under heavy braking
and you feel more of the road
over rough corrugations, which
is both good and bad. I quite
liked the feel of floating over
bumps on the telelever with the
old R 1200 S but the tradeoff for
that is less initial weight on the
tire when braking, so each to
their own, really.
Off the brakes and on the
gas, that low, almost unen-
thusiastic, boxer drone from
the large silencer behind your
right leg soundtracks your ride,
enveloping you like an airtight
insurance policy as you play
with the torque in sixth gear,
using the rolling momentum and
enjoying the smoothness of it
all. The boxer powerplant has
become so smooth in its current
iteration that there's almost none
of the traditional rocking you
get with a horizontally-opposed
engine, which is in one way a
bit of a shame because that trait
used to define a BMW motorcy-
cle. It's still there, just softened,
and as you cruise up and down
the main torque playground of
4000-7000 rpm you can't help
but notice how far the boxer
engine has come over the last
few years.
The RS doesn't feel overly
fast. It's more a stately speed,
similar to a 5-series saloon of
the same brand, cosseting you
