The name: the Pink Panther

Two very different R1100GSses

After I crashed my beloved Bumble Bee, the insurance allowed me to buy a new one, a red-and-white 75-anniversary model, which I called the Pink Panther (red and white making pink).

Here the Pink Panther is seen on her first day, shiny and all. She has seen sand and mud since then...

She brought us to Norway and Greece, but somehow, I never related to her as I had done to the BB.

Apart from that, I sometimes felt that the perfect behaviour of the GS had its boring side: the fact that the bike feels secure in every circumstance, also has the effect that it doesn't matter how you ride. On the XT, everything feels exciting at half the speed (or even much less) of the GS.

Unfortunately, I had lots of problems with this one: The gearbox had to be changed, the shocks at the back had to be changed, the ABS malfunctioned (the pause between two brake periods, when the ABS came in, was much too long, with the result that almost no brakes were applied; this has never been resolved), and somehow, the engine never had as much torque as my old one did. I should have had both on a dynojet or something...

So, at a certain moment, I traded her in for the Bimota Mantra...