What happened to touring bikes?

[Pedro]

What happened to touring bikes, like proper road touring bikes for long distances across countries?

From what I can see, there are only BMW, Harley and the Goldwing, doing touring bikes.

Kawasaki has these on their webpage, it doesn't need any comments:

 

 

 

Yamaha? Yamaha has a bloody three wheeler on it's touring section 

 

 

Suzuki does have a form of tourer

 

 

Honda, granted, has the proper continent munching behemoth Goldwing, and apart from that has that new one with the Africa Twin engine and chain drive, BMW has the RT and the big K1600 line, and Harley has the ... Harleys, but what happened to the FJR, the GTR, the Paneuropean? Is the big touring market really reduced to three bikes plus Harleys?

[XTreme]

Adv bikes have taken over Pedro.....I suspect there's very little demand for old school tourers now.

Basically everybody wants to be seen on a GS like yours!

[boboneleg]

Pete's right.  Feckin 'Adventure' bikes , it gets on my tits.  I still call them 'big trailes' .

Good point though Pedro, what the hell has happened to the 'Touring' bike.  Imo you'd do best just buying the latest version of your GS as I don't think anything else comes close.

[Catteeclan]

Called progress. Sports touring sounds faster.

My Tracer gt is amongst the Yamaha sports touring range and does it well.
 

[Pedro]

7 hours ago, boboneleg said:

Pete's right.  Feckin 'Adventure' bikes , it gets on my tits.  I still call them 'big trailes' .

Good point though Pedro, what the hell has happened to the 'Touring' bike.  Imo you'd do best just buying the latest version of your GS as I don't think anything else comes close.

A big GS isn't a nice motorway bike though, not in the way a proper fairing and smooth 4 or more cylinder bike is with a long ratio top gear. 140kmh on the motorway gets old fast, I think.

 

2 hours ago, Catteeclan said:

Called progress. Sports touring sounds faster.

My Tracer gt is amongst the Yamaha sports touring range and does it well.
 

Yes, ok, but that's like my GS, more at home on twisty roads than if you were to want to do really big distances.

 

12 hours ago, XTreme said:

Adv bikes have taken over Pedro.....I suspect there's very little demand for old school tourers now.

Basically everybody wants to be seen on a GS like yours!

I don't think nobody bought big tourers for wanting to be seen on one, though. Being seen on a GS isn't something that appealing either, plenty about and not exactly special, often by people who have trouble going down a sidewalk. 

[Catteeclan]

3 hours ago, Pedro said:

Yes, ok, but that's like my GS, more at home on twisty roads than if you were to want to do really big distances.

Yes it's good on twists to but it's done over 500 in a day and I'd only really need a better seat to make it more comfortable. I get a numb arse on anything.
I get your point though, maybe as bike sales have plummeted touring bikes have suffered more.

[XTreme]

On 22/02/2022 at 15:48, Catteeclan said:

maybe as bike sales have plummeted touring bikes have suffered more.

I thought bike sales were going up?

[Pedro]

3 minutes ago, XTreme said:

I thought bike sales were going up?

Since the first Covid crisis, yes, but I think that was after a few years of sales going down.

 

[XTreme]

1 hour ago, Mawsley said:

The world was too thick to realise the XJ900S was the finest touring bike created. Which was ace because it kept the prices pinned down.

Which is why we now have none.

People are, as always, a bunch of cunts.

Fucking heavy bastards though Dave!