The Sport-Touring Divide – Question of the Day
Sporty sport-tourer or ADV-lite?
Industry trends come and go, but one that’s been sticking around for the last few years is the “adventuresque” sport-tourer. Bikes like the Kawasaki Versys 1000, the Yamaha Tracer 9, or the Suzuki GSX-S1000GX, with long-travel suspension, comfortable ergos and ADV-inspired styling, but designed to do most of their work on paved roads.
Almost every time we write about bikes like these, we can’t help but think about how they have redefined the term “sport-tourer”. Once upon a time, a sport-tourer was a sportbike designed to be comfortable enough to ride for long distances. Nowadays, we have “crossovers”, bikes with sporty performance into an ADV package. Even BMW calls the M 1000 XR, which is probably more at home on a race track than a fire road, a “crossover”, even though the only thing adventure about it is its vestigial beak.
Traditional sport-tourers aren’t as fashionable these days, but they still exist, like Suzuki’s GSX-S1000GT, or Kawasaki’s supercharged H2 SX. Others, like the Yamaha FJR1300 or Kawasaki Concours 14, are slowly fading into history.
So, for our Question of the Day, we ask: do you prefer the traditional sport-tourer, or do you like its evolution into today’s crossovers?
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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XTZ1200
Crossover. The core motorcycle buyer has gotten older. The sport touring bikes I used to take on tours are simply not comfortable enough any more.