The G650 and Sertao BMWs are in some ways the same super-reliable bike as the X-challenge but with quite a different feel to them despite having more or less the same engine and frame. The XTZ is a thumper of the original order but dressed firmly in adventure clothes – and to good effect. The exceptions to the “where have all the singles gone?” question is the Yamaha XT660Z Tenere, and BMW’s current G-series pairing, the G650GS and G650 Sertao. BMW took on the tooling for it and really still knock out the same thing in the G650GS and Sertao bikes today. It features the by then basically BMW single-cylinder engine originally designed and built by Rotax. The X-challenge ‘s place was to be that good looking one that could do more off-road, take you better places and have a bit more edge to it. The smaller sibling X-country proved an incredibly useful bike for novice off-road riders because it was small and light enough to not be daunting yet, solid and close enough to what many would consider a ‘normal’ road bike to not scare the crap out of people. The range included the X-challenge dual-sport enduro trail bike, X-country which was more of a soft option and X-moto supermoto model. In that list sat the BMW G650 X-challenge, part of three bikes in the BMW G-series line-up produced between 2006-2009.

For many adventure riders these bullet-proof bikes still do make up most the entry list. If proof were needed of their usefulness, back in the day the above list made up much of the Dakar entry.

For those of you who still have access to these machines, appreciate them!) They were powerful enough to be useful on the road and nimble enough off it. (Note: DR 650’s and KLR’s aren’t sold new in the europe. It’s easy to get all rose-tinted about these things but XRs, KLRs, XTs and DRs of old were all legends which bummed along coping with road and trail in a vague dirt bike chassis but still being enough of a road bike to clock up road miles economically and reliably. I must admit I feel like we’ve entered into a forgotten world with this test, a world that used to be strong and a time when most bike manufacturers were producing decent trail bikes. Why don’t manufacturers make more bikes like this? What went wrong with the world and why did it decide it not longer needed single cylinder big trail bikes?Īsk this question to people who know and you get the same answer, “I don’t know.” Sure, there are older used models out there lurking about and some manufacturers currently make bikes with a single cylinder motor lurking in their but a proper traily bike as God intended? You need to go back to roughly about the time BMW stopped making the G650 X-challenge. We checked out a fine example to see just why the BMW G-series classic has achieved such cult status in the adventure travel world. BMW’s short-lived but much loved G650 X-challenge is a bike just as capable travelling the world as it is welcoming in first time off-roader down their local trail.

Bmw g 650 x moto review