Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i Motorcycle Mojo Magazine

This was it, we had finally reached Patagonia. Time to face my biggest fear of our entire Canada to Argentina journey: the notorious winds. Back on Route 66, now over a year ago, 60 km/h side winds had scared the living bejesus out of me, throwing my little Honda NX250 around like a leaf, almost blowing me into oncoming traffic on several occasions. Even my partner, Aidan, on his sturdier BMW F650 GS, had battled to stay on the road. Unlike anything I always pictured, the wind hadn’t pushed me over top down, but instead had torn the wheels out from underneath me. How was I supposed to be leaning into that? Since that day, a nagging fear had been simmering in the back of my mind and the videos…

We are getting old and maybe a little decrepit, but like all motorcyclists, we want to keep experiencing riding adventures. Motorcycle touring gets in your blood. This year, John Anderson, Jim Oliver and I decided to keep the ride in Canada and answer the call of the north. We would head off on a ride after the heat of the summer had dissipated but hoped to catch an elusive autumn Indian summer. The plan for me was to take a leisurely two days riding the backroads of Southern Ontario from my home north of Kingston to Owen Sound visiting family and friends before meeting up with John and Jim. Before joining my riding buddies, I met Ian Davis (we were surgical residents at Queens University in the late 1970s) on…

FIVE YEARS ON THE ROAD Lisa Morris returns with the lessons she’s learned on the road while traversing countries, climates and chaos with her partner Jason Spafford. The roller-coaster of emotions, not knowing what tomorrow will bring, the unremarkable days on the blacktop, the coffee brewed on a beer-can stove at the edge of nowhere. Lisa opens up and tells us how life on the roads changes a person. 2025 KTM ADVENTURE R AND ENDURO R Originally released in 2020, the KTM 390 Adventure was a good entrylevel motorcycle, but lacked some off-road focus. It was a great bike for someone who didn’t know what they were missing in the dirt. The 2025 KTM 390 Adventure R and this new platform is a different beast that only shares the same…

Suzuki GSX-8T and GSX-8TT Suzuki has introduced a pair of retro bikes, which, according to the manufacturer, were “inspired by [the] iconic Suzuki T500 Titan,” a two-stroke twin introduced in 1968. The original produced a very respectable 47 horsepower, which was considered superbike power in the day. However, it was a temperamental handler known for shaking its head when ridden hard. It nonetheless had some road racing success, including being the first two-stroke motorcycle to win an AMA national road race. While inspired by the spirit — if not the styling — of the Suzuki Titan, these neo-retro naked bikes are actually based on the GSX-8S, utilizing the same frame, engine, steering geometry, and KYB suspension, which is adjustable only for rear preload. Its 776-cc, 270-degree parallel-twin produces 82 hp…

Like so many great discoveries — penicillin, Velcro and, yes, Viagra — BMW’s GS was an accident. Okay, not quite an accident: the act of shoving a 797.5-cc Boxer twin into a motocross chassis hardly a random bit of engineering. But, at the very least, its instigation was, even way back in 1978, a sideshow, and its eventual success — leading to what has become motorcycling’s fastest growing segment — was not remotely forecast. It was, in every sense of the word, a “skunkworks” project, the work of one or two men looking to conquer a racing series that almost no one today remembers. THE ORIGIN OF GENRE The common refrain is that the “Gelände/Straße” was created to take BMW into the then hugely popular Paris-Dakar race. And indeed, at…

Where to start is my big question. Do I lead with the fact that the new Bimota Tesi H2 Tera is a supercharged adventure tourer with 197 horsepower that weighs just 233 kilograms? Or is the big deal here the fact that, thanks to its compact “Tesi” hub-centre front end, the Tera’s wheelbase is more than 100-millimetres shorter than the best of current litreplus adventure bikes and just a smidgen longer than the very best superbikes, and shorter than a good many. We’re talking Ninja ZX-10RRs and Ducati Panigales here, folks, and the new Bimota is, again, an adventure tourer. So, it’s a tough call as to which attribute reigns supreme. Let the Tera loose on the Autostrada Adriatica between Rimini and Bologna, for instance, and you’ll be totally convinced…

This is a picture of my dad, Jean-Louis Coallier, with his 1942 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead playing with my older brother. My dad was from Sherrington, QC., but this photo was taken in Saint Donat, QC., in the summer 1954. SUBMISSIONS TO REMEMBER WHEN? ARE ALWAYS WELCOME. IF YOUR PHOTO(S) IS PRINTED WE WILL SEND YOU $25.00 HIGH RESOLUTION DIGITAL PHOTOS ARE ACCEPTABLE AS WELL AS PRINTS. IF YOU WISH THE PRINT BACK PLEASE INCLUDE A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE. SEND TO: EDITOR@MOTORCYCLEMOJO.COM…

220 Engineer Brian Crighton began working on another Wankel design for his own company. What he created was the most powerful Wankel engine to date. A 690-cc rotary engine producing 220 hp equipped with an ingenious engine cooling system. The CR700W motorcycle is built completely of Crighton’s design and weighs in at only 129.5 kg. Doing the math, the engine produces more horsepower per litre than a Ferrari F2004 Formula 1 engine. 1924 The year German mechanical engineer Felix Wankel originally conceived the rotary engine. In 1929, he acquired his first patent for the engine. However, his first running prototype wasn’t realized until 1957. 1994 The year that Wankel engines became banned from the British SuperCup. Brian Crighton had paired up with Colin Seeley to put together a race team.…

“I CROSSED THE COUNTRY WITH MY $2,000 BIKE; THE BET HAS BEEN WON” The long Canadian winter is a very favourable time to go over piles of bike magazines, read travel stories, and browse brochures, catalogues and maps, all in preparation for the next riding season. And then, of course, there are the seasonal motorcycle shows, which I never miss. And that’s how, while strolling the show floor, I stopped short in front of a booth and a great set of kaki soft-sided panniers. I thought they could be the perfect set on my next bike for a long trip. But at $2,000 for the set, that’s a budget in itself, and I’d need a bike to set it in motion. I promptly came up with this crazy idea: what…

In case you haven’t noticed, Chinese motorcycles are here to stay, but not in the form in which they were first intro Canada. In the early 2000s, disreputable websites and salesmen in small-time powersports dealerships started pushing machines like the Konker KSM200 or the Lifan GY-5 — low-powered motorcycles, with an emphasis on dual sports, scooters and cruisers, with low price tags. Oh, and low quality, too. I would know: I spent years riding these bikes for various tests, and while I never had one blow up on me, I did spend a lot of time cleaning up rust and fixing basic problems that you’d never find on a Japanese bike, like a suspension linkage that worked to reduce shock travel, not extend it. The new crop of Chinese bikes…

Little can put as big a hole in your day like exiting your favourite restaurant, pub or your girlfriend’s house only to find the spot that once held your two-wheeled pride and joy bereft of motorcycle. I had a Yamaha RD350 stolen many years ago and it still haunts me. Hence why to this day, I always carry a disc lock, and why my garage has the mother of all security systems. Combining a steel beam that goes right through the door and a monster pad lock: If someone wants my bike, they’re going to have to saw a big hole through my two-layered door, a process I pray pisses off the neighbours so much they call the cops. But that only works at home. What to do when you’re…