GASGAS ES 700

If you thought big-bore four-stroke dual-sport bikes were on the way to extinction, think again. There’s a place in Austria where they’ve continued thriving, thumping on in special orange, white and now red habitats, with the breeding of the new GasGas ES 700.

STORY & PHOTOS ANDREW CLUBB

A new day dawns as the skies take on a tinge of red to herald the arrival of the latest bigbore thumper from the Pierer Group. It’s the GasGas ES 700 and yes, it shares more than a little in common with its orange and white cousins.

With 74 horsepower at 8000rpm under the hood, and weighing in at less than 150kg dry, the Gasser absolutely barks when you open the taps.

Talk about smashing the senses, this was like Darryl Brohman copping a king hit from Les Boyd. Boof!

After being treated to a steady diet of super luxurious multi-cylinder ADV hardware over recent months, climbing aboard the new GasGas ES 700 and racking up the miles on it was like strapping yourself to the wing of an airplane and holding on tight.

The shiny red Gasser is adventure riding done raw. No screen, no fairing, and no plush and comfy saddle, all wrapped up in full-on big-bore thumper dual-sport ergos from a manufacturer whose heritage is deeply ingrained in the dirt bike world.

If you’ve got a no-nonsense desire to push the off-road boundaries of adventure riding, the ES 700 is a bike that will take you there. Just like its orange cousin, the KTM 690 Enduro R, or its white cousin, the Husqvarna 701 Enduro. The toughest decision you have to make is which colour you like most.

PICK A COLOUR

Okay, give yourself a gold star if you’ve been barking, ‘It’s just a red KTM!’ No sh*t, Sherlock. It’s a red Husqvarna, too. It’s badge engineering and the Pierer Group have become absolute masters at it since expanding the KTM empire by procuring the Husqvarna and then GasGas brands over recent years.

This particular piece of the Pierer Group puzzle dates back to 2008, when KTM took its legendary LC4 powerplant and bolted it into a fresh new trellis frame designed with a big dose of Dakar Rally race bike heritage to create the 690 Enduro, as something of a belated replacement for KTM’s 600/620/625/640 thumpers and the much loved 640 Adventure.

I have fond memories of KTM’s debut 690 Enduro, as I managed to park my backside on the very first one to arrive in America, thanks to an old mate by the name of Franz Sollhammer, who just so happened back then to be KTM’s global export manager. He pulled a few strings and the timing was right, and I got to ride the 690 from Los Angeles up into the ADV paradise known as Death Valley.

Mind you, the start of that assignment was a little rocky: there I was, mooching north along the highway through Ridgecrest on the way to the Mojave Desert, when a CHP car going the other way did a fast spin around and pulled me over for a licence check. He soon discovered I was from Australia, carrying a New South Wales driver’s licence, riding an Austrian- built motorcycle, that I did not own, that was registered and insured in someone else’s name in the state of Ohio, through the state of California. It certainly wasn’t a routine pull-over. But everything checked out and he soon waved me on way, with a warning to, ‘Watch out for the drink drivers …’ At 9.30am in the morning? ‘They’ll still be wearing it off from the night before.’ Right, Sir, duly noted. And whatever I do, keep right.