Cycle News

VOL. 55 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 16, 2018 P73 are more than 50 items in a dedicated Tiger 1200 aftermar- ket catalog), but at high speeds it's totally stable without luggage fitted—no shimmies, no weaving as the wind stream catches the high handlebars, no misbehavior of any kind. HITTING THE SWEET SPOT The Tiger 1200's motor has a completely linear power deliv- ery via a literally diagonal power curve, running all the way to the 9500 rpm cutout that's surpris- ingly hard-action for a ride-by- wire digital throttle setup, and is actually shown as 10,000 revs on the ultra-visible TFT dash's tacho. The sweet spot of the mo- tor is between 4500-8000 rpm, and if you wind it up in the gears it'll accelerate very hard. But the engine is so torquey and flexible that it makes sense to take full advantage of that and cut down on gear changing, even with the easy-action two-way power- shifter. That power output allows Triumph to underline that this is still the most powerful shaft-drive 1200 on the market, although with the XRT weighing in at 535 pounds dry even after going on a diet, against the 534-pound curb weight of BMW's R 1200 GS, it's far from being the lightest. Add in a full 5.5-gallon fuel load and oil plus water, and you're looking at a curb weight for the Tiger 1200 of around 584 pounds. However, thanks to its sub- tly revamped architecture and above all the kilos it has shed versus the Explorer, it's no longer as much of an issue as before, and you certainly don't get such a sweat on making it change direction as before. It turns in easily, aided by the good leverage from the revised handlebar, and proved surpris- ingly adept at switching from side to side through a series of third- gear mountain turns—you don't feel instinctively it's as big a lump of metal as the Explorer did, and the fact that Triumph has gone up on rear tire size to a 170/60- 17 Metzeler Tourance (combined with a 120/70-19 front) versus the peculiarly narrow 150/70-17 rear cover the Explorer started out life wearing, hasn't heavied up the steering in any way. BETTER BRAKES, BETTER BIKE A further definite improvement on the Tiger 1200 is the new model's brake package with switchable Continental cornering ABS and five-level traction con- trol, with the same twin 305mm floating front discs as before now gripped by benchmark Brembo radially mounted Monoblock four-piston calipers, and a single- piston Nissin sliding caliper liberating an extra three horse- power, changing just an octave when you do so. It's impossible not to have your soul stirred rid- ing the Tiger 1200 hard. Do that, and you will however find yourself holding third gear for long stretches of twisting, curvaceous highway, occasion- ally switching into fourth, then back again, letting the revs rise to around eight grand, then run- ning as low as 2500 rpm out of a slow turn. The Tiger 1200 motor is so torquey that fifth gear is a pretty pointless ratio, because once you get on a more open highway you'll just stick it in sixth and go with the flow. A five-speed gearbox would have been ample for this bike, if not for bragging rights—100 mph comes up at 6000 rpm, just two-thirds of the way to redline—so this really is a serious mile eater, just as the R 1200 GS is, except the German bike doesn't have The Sound! I saw 7000 rpm in sixth gear which equated to 125 mph, but the Triumph is digitally limited to 136 mph, supposedly to do with stability when fitted with the optional hard luggage (there Fog lights are standard fare with both models.

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