EICMA 2021 - Where’s the adventure?
The big 4 Japanese companies have given us nothing but a few tweaks this year, if you don’t count Hondas ADV350 scooter.
The hot mail is that Honda will cough up one of the most anticipated moments of the show in the next couple of days, by revealing the Transalp - we live in hope.
The Europeans: A bit like the Japanese manufacturers, BMW, Ducati, Guzzi, KTM and Husqvarna have pretty much shown nothing but tweaks and models like the Norden 901 that we knew about months ago.
The ‘Chinese’ Italians: a few interesting bikes popping up out of China at the moment, mostly via Italian brand names and designers but again, nothing we didn’t already know about. The Piaggio group probably has the most interesting addition here with the Aprilia 660 Toureg.
Moto Morini have a 650 as well in the 649 X CAPE. A great looking adventure bike with what looks to be a CF Moto 650 twin powerplant or similar.
MV Augusta have thrown in the 9.5 and 5.5, unfortunately both looking a little porky. The 9.5 is compensating slightly for its 220kg dry weight with its 125hp three cylinder engine. The 5.5 is compensating for nothing, with nothing. At 47.6hp and exactly the same weight as the 9.5 (yes that’s right), the poor little 5.5 on paper at least, resembles that Hugo kid in the 1980’s KFC commercials.
Time will tell, but traditionally MV don’t hold back on price tags so if they go all business as usual on these two bikes, I can see a lot of them sitting in the “unwanted” corner of warehouses all over the world.
Last of the Chinese onslaught in the adventure bike range is Benelli due to the fact that CF Moto flashed their 800MT at the 2019 EICMA. Here we are, 2 two years later watching You Tube vids of it being happily owned and ridden in third world countries, but still haven’t seen it in Australia.
Benelli….Oooh Benelli. Seemingly not learning a thing from the good looking but hefty TRK 502, Benelli have gone right ahead and produced an 800. OK, they’ve re-badged their mother company Qianjiang’s 750 and called it the TRK 800.
If you thought the 502 was rubbish, sit down and brace for the only two figures I will bother with: 76hp-249kg.
So in essence, there really isn’t much exciting to report from EICMA yet. I’m sure it would be nice to see long awaited models like the Norden, the Toureg and hopefully the Transalp in the flesh and I’m certain there’s a mountain of innovation and fantastic new things in the parts and accessories displays.
Personally, I would love to see it and I’m well overdue for a trip to Milan. I’m just hoping that R&D gets exciting over the next year or so, otherwise I might be tempted to use my hard earned frequent flyer points to fly into Munich, hire a big old Beemer and hit the Bavarian Alps instead.
