Video: Big bikes, in the dirt

Remember a couple years ago, when we wrote an editorial panning the tack taken by modern adventure bike designers, saying they were turning them into the two-wheeled equivalent of the SUV?

If not, read it here – it was so good, that one of our competitors decided to plagiarize it, barely rewording it after copy-and-pasting it, then protesting innocence when we called them on it. Mysteriously, they did go and rewrite the text after we complained  …

But back to business! We aren’t the only people a bit skeptical of big bikes’ performance in the dirt. Here’s what Bike SA did, after hearing all the complaining about big bikes off-road. Check out their video below. The full story is available in this month’s issue of their magazine, but print copies are a little scarce in North America (available for iPad, though!).

Thing is, though, although the video does show big bikes being thrown around in the dirt, it’s also true that they have spoked wheels, they’re rolling on proper sized tires, and they’re in fairly wide-open terrain, not tight woods. As far as big bikes go, these are about as dirt-worthy as they get – good luck getting a road-biased “adventure bike” with 17-inch wheels and sticky street rubber up a sand dune …