The Moto Guzzi Stelvio NTX

Perhaps the bike’s name should have given me a clue. After bashing my right leg for the umpteenth time on the wide, angular side-boxes while climbing aboard the Stelvio NTX, I realised why Moto Guzzi might have borrowed the title of the cloud-piercing Stelvio Pass in the Alps. The seat is very high – and the price is steep, too.

This is a bike in the BMW Gelände/Strasse tradition – the boxer-engined two-wheeler introduced in 1980 that spawned the category of large-engined “adventure tourers”. BMW used an 800cc, horizontally opposed twin motor for the GS because it was the pick of the engines the German manufacturer was building at the time. But it didn’t produce any more power than smaller and lighter motors from rival companies, and it meant the bike had lardy weight to match its lumpen size. The cylinders also stuck out just where riders might want to put a steadying leg on tight or slippery tracks.

BMW’s solution was to hire some exceptional riders to win some exceptional races. Hubert Auriol and Gaston Rahier in the early days of the Paris-Dakar rally – when it still went through Africa to Senegal, rather than through a less perilous South America – spring to mind.

This image management helped to sell the tough-looking bikes to riders who wanted to feel as if they could go to the ends of the earth, even if the most arduous riding they were going to do was across a gravel car park on a Sunday ride to a National Trust property.

Many other bike makers have climbed aboard the big-motored bandwagon, with machines ranging from the extremely agile Adventure from Austria’s KTM to the Tiger from Britain’s Triumph, which has always been a good road bike but lacks any off-road ability to match its image.

Moto Guzzi should have been a natural to steal sales from BMW. All of its bikes are based on an identical layout: V-twin engine, arranged across the frame, with shaft drive. That is close to the arrangement on the big BMW GS models – and, in fact, the V-oriented cylinders are less likely to snag legs than the German boxer.

Guzzi may have been using the same engine layout for half a century, but it has also carved out a niche as a pioneer: first bike with a torque converter automatic transmission, first with linked brakes to ease the rider’s workload and first bike maker to use a wind tunnel as a routine design tool. It also made the ridiculously gorgeous Le Mans sports models – whose lithe form seduced me thoroughly in the 1970s, aided by stunning photographs in Bike magazine from Bob Carlos Clarke (before he grew famous enough to concentrate on celebrities and underclothed women).

What the Italian manufacturer cannot do, though, is magic away enough weight or size to make the Stelvio NTX a great offroader. It shares this problem with the BMW GS series, although the KTM Adventure, with its slimmer profile and a sporting pedigree that includes numerous Dakar rally wins, does a much better job.

Guzzi’s first adventure tourer was the Quota, in the early 1990s, which might be best thought of as a road bike dressed in offroad clothes: tall and ponderously heavy. The Stelvio, launched two years ago, was a big improvement, while the new Stelvio NTX has a retuned engine to suit its more offroad-oriented capabilities. The engine work was done by Aprilia, a fellow brand in Italy’s Piaggio motorcycle and scooter empire.

Picking up the bike in Cambridge and heading off for East Midlands Airport along what is, in a car, one of the most boring roads on the planet, the power delivery helped turn the journey into a joy. A tweak of the throttle blasted me past slower vehicles, without having to trouble the gearbox. Wide handlebars gave an excellent feel for what the front tyre was doing and enough leverage to throw the bike around mobile obstacles. The high riding position also allowed me to see over cars, meaning I was better able to work out what their drivers were going to do before they did it.

The only concern was the pannier cases, which are so wide, and so solid, I feared unwittingly collecting a small car on one of them as a luggage mascot.

Back in town, the panniers were easily unlocked and removed to make traffic-threading easier. When they were off, The Professor, my partner, noted how much easier it was to reach the pillion accommodation. She also pronounced the seat, and upright riding position, very comfortable. And apart from a bit of helmet-bashing (cured by her sitting slightly further back) the bike’s torquey engine and good balance meant I hardly noticed that she was on board – most of the time.

She added, though, that the handgrips were in completely the wrong place to brace herself against acceleration – such that she resorted to hooking a foot under one footrest to stay in place. Not ideal – especially when a cutting-in car forced me to brake sharply and threw her off balance, butting my helmet smartly.

Up at the front, the riding position is commanding, even though the adjustable seat is less lofty than the BMW R1200GS Adventure by quite a margin. But the whole machine is big enough and tall enough to rule out serious offroad riding. You’ll have to settle for the views from the road over the Stelvio Pass.

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The details

Moto Guzzi’s heavyweight adventure tourer

How powerful?
The 1,151cc V-twin engine has four valves per cylinder and puts out 105bhp

How much?
£11,568

How fast?
125mph

How thirsty?
40mpg

How heavy?
251kg

How lofty?
Seat height 82/84cm

Also consider
BMW R1200GS Adventure: 256kg, seat height 89/91cm, about £13,460