The 9 finalists for the 2nd Annual SA Bike of the year competition have been named:
BMW R1200 GS Adventure
BMW S1000 R
Ducati 899 Panigale
Ducati 1200 Monster
Kawasaki Z1000
KTM Super Duke 1290
Suzuki DL1000 V-Strom
Yamaha MT-07
Yamaha MT-09
The winner for the 1st Annual Bike of the Year competition, the BMW R1200 GS, makes it difficult for organisers to find a worthy successor.
The winner will be determined by a panel of 16 judges, all of which are South African motoring journalists. The judges each had to choose their top 8 bikes from a list of 27 eligible entries, which were either brand new models or re-engineered significantly. A 9th bike was added to the list after 2 bikes tied for votes.
This year’s line-up will be dominated by ‘naked’ motorcycles, which have their mechanical bits on display and little or no wind protection.
High-performance super-nakeds in the list include BMW’s S1000R, Ducati’s Monster 1200, Kawasaki’s Z1000 and KTM’s Super Duke 1290R; while the 689cc Yamaha MT-07 and 847cc MT-09 represent lesser-powered iterations of the same theme.
The only fully-faired superbike in the list is Ducati’s 899 Panigale.
The V-Strom is the all-new (and much better-looking) version of Suzuki’s touring motorcycle.
A 2-day judging event will be held in the Sabie / Hazyview area. Here the judges will ride all the finalist motorcycles over a variety of road and off-road (if applicable) courses. The winner of the contest will be announced at this year’s AMID Motorcycle Expo, which takes place from 8-10 August at the Johannesburg Expo Centre, Nasrec.
Keep an eye out for tickets for this event on the Junk Mail events section by setting up an alert!
