Did Moto Guzzi unveil the most salable bike at Intermot 2018?

In Germany, Indian showed off the most performance-minded production motorcycle they’ve sold since Hoover was in office, and Suzuki tapped into the retro wave that appears will never crash. Yet I think it’s actually Moto Guzzi who brought the motorcycle that has the biggest potential to move units.

The V85 TT (“tutto terreno,” Italian for “all-terrain”) is a middleweight adventure bike. Nothing groundbreaking there, I suppose. However for a low-volume manufacturer like Guzzi, a bike that picks up even modest mainstream success can boost gross sales percentage figures through the roof, and I think the V85 TT could well do that.

The V85 TT is powered by an 850 cc, two-valve-per-cylinder, air-cooled flying-vee (what else?!) making 80 horsepower. We’re looking at a 17/19-inch wheelset and a retro-rally look that is arguably one of the most cohesive designs I’ve seen assembled to date. It looks authentic without appearing ridiculous, to me. Case in point: The rear shock is a single piggyback unit, but mounted outboard on the right side of the bike to give the appearance of an older, dual-shock off-road machine. Brilliant.

Let me tell you why I’m so bullish on the sales, and after that, I’ll tell you a bit more about the V85, as full specs and details have not been released yet. Spurg penned a rather prescient article about a year ago, citing a few facts that are common knowledge to us, but I think mostly overlooked by non-industry people.

• Off-road and larger dual-sport motorcycles together make up one of the only growing segments in motorcycling right now
• Many of the people who shop in that category are looking for machines that sit right on the edge of dual-sport (let’s generalize and call those singles) and adventure bikes (and we’ll generalize and call those multi-cylinder bikes)
• Weight is a prime consideration

The manufacturers know this, obviously. It’s not like we’re God’s gift to motorcycle forecasting. So Guzzi’s competitors (read: any OEM bigger than them, so pretty much everyone) started working on bikes like this. Yamaha has the T7 prototype and KTM floated their 790 Adventure R concept. Honda took a slightly different tack and put 650-like power into a bike that weighs 60 pounds less than their venerable old XR. (That would be the CRF450L Spurg wrote up just a while ago.)

Note that all those bikes are sort of “new gen,” meaning that they’re probably going to offer better performance (but at a higher price) than some designs that are a few years old, like the BMW F 800 GS, Suzuki V-strom 650 XT, or Triumph Tiger 800. The ADV category, in addition to continuing to grow, also seems to be one that is not dominated as heavily by price as other segments — if you need proof of that, look at how many R 1200 GS motorcycles BMW sends out the door, and those are hardly cheap.

The V85 TT fits into this new gen nicely, and Guzzi, unveiling their production-ready model, may actually beat the bigger players into the game.

People who buy in this category are usually using the bikes off-road, as opposed to some of the larger-bikes-that-only-go-to-Starbucks set. (I belong to that category, too, so I can say that.) Anecdotally, off-road riders seem to do more of their own work than nearly any segment but the guys on antiques and/or choppers, and most are accustomed to less-than-perfect dealer networks. (Seriously. Beta? GasGas? Sherco? None of those makes is in business because they have great dealer systems. It’s not a coinkydink they all sell off-road bikes.) Guzzi’s usual Achilles heel, their dealers (or rather, their lack of dealers) won’t really matter as much to the person buying this bike and using it as intended.

Guzzi has a bike in the V85 that should go toe-to-toe with some of these new-gen adventure bikes if the weight is reasonable. Air-cooling will appeal to a lot of riders who understand how frail radiators seem in the presence of branches and rocks, but the bike has many modern niceties that make adventure fun: ABS, a TFT dash, LED headlights, and riding modes. (OK, so a TFT dash isn’t really necessary, but it is cool and shows that this bike is a contender in that “cutting edge” group of light ADV machines.) Oh, and it’s got a luggage rack over the tail as standard equipment. Boss.

A few of you will howl about the weight, which is as-of-yet unpublished, and I will grant you that this bike will likely be a bit porkier than some of the other bikes in the class. My counterargument: First, it probably will not be egregiously heavy by comparison and secondly, some of the weight can be overlooked due to a portion of it coming from the driveshaft, which is an unbelievably reliable setup off-road. A driveshaft and an air-cooled mill will absolutely appeal to people who prize longevity and the ability to make it back out of the woods.

And this bike also manages to do what almost none of the others can: be classically styled! People shopping for lighter adventure bikes need them primarily because they are small enough to be used reasonably off-road. Off-road riders almost always skew younger; they outnumber the elderly in the woods. This Guzzi hits the sweet spot in the age bracket: riders young enough to go plonk around on the trails occasionally and dig retro looks, but old enough to pay for a middleweight specialty Italian machine, so price, also a Guzzi weak spot, probably won’t matter as much in this bracket.

So overall, I think Guzzi won't sell more of these, say, than Honda sells Africa Twins. But if we look at things in terms of a sales increase, say as a percentage of a marque's total sales figure? I think Guzzi just might have a ringer.

I’d far rather see someone with off-road intentions buy this than most of the retro-scramblers. It looks the part, and by spec sheet, actually has some off-road chops. I really like this bike conceptually.

So much so, in fact, that if Spurg wants to keep the keys to the FTR like he said, I’ll leave that uncontested if it means I get to be the first person at CT on this motorcycle.