#versatile

Pure, as in unadulterated, undiluted, genuine, real. Pure, as in elemental, untainted, and distilled down to its most basic form. With the Pure version of the R nineT, BMW has stripped the platform of everything its designers deemed interfered with the integrity of the ride. If the Pure were made with a less care, it might have ended up feeling stripped down, incomplete. Instead, the Pure is surprisingly successful and may be my favorite R nineT variant yet.

Some of us remember a time when you didn’t have to be folded up like a preying mantis to ride a 600cc supersport bike. What Millenials, Generation Z, Plurals – or whatever the heck the media is calling the desirable, young market segment this week – may not know from personal experience is that something was lost in the sportbike wars over the last 20 years. Yes, we’ve seen some amazing technological advancement in power delivery and handling, but as the manufacturers went through their two year cycles of ground up reimagining of their hottest middleweights in search of the all-important racing titles across the globe, the relentless sharpening of the performance envelope has come with some costs.