2024 Bimota Tera

The first big traillie/adventure bikes began to appear in the 1980s – bikes like the Honda Africa Twin 750 V-twin and the Yamaha Ténéré models – as well as a weird niche bike from BMW callled the R80 G/S (whatever happened to that?). They looked ready to take on a ride to the ends of the world, and, indeed, were capable of going a long way, as well as featuring in genuine desert rallying and racing.

2024 Bimota Tera

But 40 years ago, no-one could have predicted how that class would have turned out. Nowadays that BMW GS class is a behemoth in terms of sales, and gets the very best flagship technology and performance. Honda’s Africa Twin is now an 1100, and Yamaha’s Ténéré is a mini sub-brand of its own with a wide range of capable machinery.

2024 Bimota Tera

And now we have this – the Bimota Tera. It features a Kawasaki H2 supercharged 999cc engine, making 200bhp, in the trademark Bimota Tesi-style chassis. A Bimota touring bike would have seemed as likely as Frank Spencer joining the SAS back in 1983, when Bimota was building high-end track-friendly superbikes, with the finest handling chassis designs around.

2024 Bimota Tera

Sure, Bimota had history of using Kawasaki engines: its raison d’etre was making bikes that handled much better than standard Japanese motorcycles, while using the excellent powertrains from the big four firms. But a big trailbike? Sacrilege doesn’t begin to cover how that would have seemed to 1980s bikers.

So that’s the history – what about the new 2024 bike? Well, Bimota is now owned by Kawasaki outright, so is being run as a sort of Skunkworks or black projects department. And again, it’s marrying up premium Japanese engines with unique Italian designed chassis and styling. And it’s gone to the extreme ends of chassis technology, using the ‘Tesi’ concept pioneered in the 1980s at Bimota.

2024 Bimota Tera

Tesi is Italian for ‘thesis’ and the original design came from the university projects of engineer Pierluigi Marconi. The main idea is to have a front swingarm rather than forks, with the wheel steering using a hub-centre linkage. That gives a direct mechanical path for braking force from the wheel into the chassis, instead of transferring the force through a pair of springs as on a telescopic fork.

Suspension is managed by a conventional monoshock linkage, and a series of rods connect the handlebars to the steering components inside the front wheel hub. The back end uses a standard monoshock swingarm.

2024 Bimota Tera

The original Tesi used a Ducati V-twin engine, with a pair of aluminium plates linking this front suspension setup to the rear swingarm, and it worked well, though it needed a different approach to track setup and riding style. The lack of dive on braking was an advantage in theory, but in practice, riders were already used to it, and had to adapt to the different front end feel.

The 2024 Bimota Tera takes that Tesi tech, and applies it to a full-bore high-end adventure tourer – though it’s very much on the Tarmac end of the big traillie spectrum. That means it’s set to take on the likes of the BMW M1000 XR and Ducati’s Multistrada V4S rather than more dirt-focused machinery. A fast sporting tourer, with longer travel suspension then.

2024 Bimota Tera

The Tera is a fearsome looking piece of kit, with that 200bhp supercharged 999cc inline-four engine bolted into the premium Tesi chassis. There are four large milled alloy frame plates that link the front and rear swingarms to the engine, while also providing mountings for suspension, steering, rider and pillion seating, bodywork and luggage.