This 100% waterproof 60 Liter Hurricane Dry Duffle Bag can be used as a tail bag to carry large items that don’t typically fit inside traditional motorcycle luggage. The patented Rigg-Strap mounting system allows riders to mount this duffle bag dry bag securely with 4 Rigg Straps coming up from 4 different points on the vehicle, through the anti-migration loops hooking the g-hooks to the MOLLE loops on the sides of the bag. Made of a heavy-duty UV-coated tarpaulin PVC material with electronically heat welded seams and a roll top closure, one can rest assured its contents will stay dry and dust free even in extreme weather.

Features include a non-slip dimpled base for durability, air purge valve for easy compression, removable stiffeners help hold its shape, carry straps double as compression straps all with a Lifetime Warranty.

This 60L Duffle Bag SE-4060 is one of 10 pieces which make up the Hurricane Collection: SE-4050 Saddlebag set (*saddlebag supports required), SE-4040 40L Duffle Bag, SE-4025 25L Duffle Bag, SE-4030 30L Backpack / Tail Pack, SE-4010 10L Dry Roll Bag, SE-3060 Dual Sport Tank Bag, SE-4008 Adventure size tank bag and also new for 2024 the SE-4012 12L and SE-4028 28L Hurricane Tail Bags complete this collection.

Like all Nelson Rigg and Rigg gear luggage this Hurricane 60L Duffle Bag carries a lifetime warranty, giving the rider the utmost confidence in the quality of any luggage choice for “wherever the journey takes you.”

Nelson Rigg is a family-owned business that has specialized in the design and production of quality Motorcycle Covers, Luggage and Rainwear for over 41 years. For more information, please visit your local dealer or visit our website at nelsonrigg.com.

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2027 BMW F450 GS Unveiled at EICMA

New 420cc twin, lightweight chassis, and innovative centrifugal clutch for BMW’s latest GS.

by [guest_author show_bio="no"]
November 4, 2025

When BMW showed the Concept F 450 GS a year ago it was immediately clear that a production version would follow and that was all but confirmed when design images of the showroom version leaked back in August. Now the real thing has been launched at the EICMA show in Italy and it looks nearly identical to the Concept that caused a significant stir in the ADV world.

Related: EICMA Motorcycle Show - Milan, Italy

It’s an important bike, both for BMW and the market as a whole. Generations of boxer-engined, R-series GS adventure bikes have dominated the adventure bike scene for decades, during which time they’ve transformed from a niche market offering to a massive mainstream success story, but recent years have seen a shift in the market as riders in affluent markets have started turning toward smaller-engined machines just as increasingly wealthy young customers in emerging markets have started to step up from cheap singles toward midsize twins. BMW needed to plug an obvious hole in its range between the single-cylinder G 310 GS and the F 800 GS, and that’s where the F 450 GS steps up to the plate.

BMW F 450 GS Engine
The engine is a new unit. Coming in at 420cc, its parallel-twin layout is par for the course in this segment, but it’s notably powerful, with 48 hp on tap, thanks to a high 13:1 compression ratio and an oversquare layout with 72mm bores and a 51.6mm stroke. The power peak arrives at 8750 rpm while a maximum torque of 32 lb.-ft. is achieved at 6750 rpm. BMW has departed from the norm when it comes to the firing interval though, equipping the twin with a 135-degree crankshaft offset that promises a unique sound and delivery, with vibrations tamed by a counterrotating balancer shaft ahead of the crank.

Related: BMW motorcycles news, prices, and updates

There’s more novelty in the transmission with the top version of the bike, the F 450 GS Trophy (the only variant sold in the US market) gets an innovative clutch system, dubbed ERC (Easy Ride Clutch). It’s designed to give a riding experience like Honda’s latest E-Clutch models, eliminating the need to worry about disengaging the clutch when you come to a halt as well as extinguishing the risk of stalling when pulling away, but it operates on a different basis. Where Honda’s E-Clutch uses an electronic brain to tell an actuator when to engage or disengage an otherwise-normal clutch, the BMW system uses a centrifugal clutch that automatically disengages when revs drop to idle. We’ve seen centrifugal clutches on bikes before—notably twist-and-go scooters as well as Honda’s old Hondamatic machines and MV Agusta’s SCS-equipped models—but the F 450 GS brings the idea into the modern mainstream. Notably, the ERC system doesn’t disengage the clutch on the overrun, so there’s conventional engine-braking, and it also has a normal clutch lever on the left bar so you can always override it if you want to rev the engine and slip the clutch for a faster launch or while performing low-speed maneuvers.

A clutch that deals with starts and stops on its own isn’t much help if you still need it during gearshifts, and to that end the GS Trophy version of the F 450 GS also has a standard-fit bidirectional quickshifter, so you can completely ignore the lever on the left-hand bar if you want.

The bike gets four riding modes (Rain, Road, Enduro, and Enduro Pro), each tweaking the ABS Pro and the Dynamic Traction Control (both lean-sensitive systems) as well as the engine-braking levels and wheelie control. In Enduro Pro, the wheelie control and rear wheel ABS are deactivated entirely.

BMW F 450 GS Chassis
While BMW has been increasingly shifting toward pressed and welded steel frames for its other models, including the R-series and F 800 and F 900 bikes, the F 450 GS sticks with a tubular steel trellis design. It gets a stable, 28.1-degree rake and 4.5 inches of trail, plus a 57.7-inch wheelbase, while suspension comes in the form of an adjustable KYB upside-down fork and a monoshock from the same brand with adjustable preload and compression damping. Each end has 7.1 inches of travel, and the wheels, 19 inches at the front and 17 at the rear, reflect the all-roads nature of the bike without going down the full off-road path of adopting a 21-inch front rim. Cast alloys are standard on European market and lower-tier models (other markets get Basic, Exclusive, and Sport trim levels as well as the GS Trophy version), but the US GS Trophy model gets cross-spoke wire wheels.

The brakes use a four-pot Brembo front caliper on a single 310mm disc on the front while a ByBre rear caliper on a 240mm rotor handles the rear, both with cornering ABS Pro as standard. There’s a large, 6.5-inch TFT dashboard with phone connectivity as standard. Elements exclusive to the GS Trophy version include blue-and-white paintwork, hand guards, the adjustable sport suspension, a white-painted frame, and an aluminum engine guard. It also gets heated grips, adjustable hand levers, and both the gear shifter and rear brake pedal can be moved to suit standing or seated riding positions.

There is some bad news though. While European sales are due to start in spring 2026, the F 450 GS isn’t heading to the US until either Q4 of 2026 or Q1 of 2027 as a ‘27 model. With a year or more to go, prices won’t be announced until much closer to that on-sale date.

2027 BMW F 450 GS Specs

MSRP:	TBA
Engine:	Water-cooled, 2-cylinder, 4-stroke in-line; 4 valves/cylinder, overhead camshafts and 135° crankshaft offset
Displacement:	420cc
Bore x Stroke:	72.0 x 51.6mm
Compression Ratio:	13.0:1
Transmission/Final Drive:	Claw-shift 6-speed manual/chain, bidirectional quickshifter
Claimed Horsepower:	48 hp @ 8750 rpm
Claimed Torque:	32 lb.-ft. @ 6750 rpm
Fuel System:	Fuel injection, throttle-by-wire
Clutch:	Wet, multiplate; hydraulic actuation, centrifugal ERC auto-clutch system
Frame:	Steel tubular space
Front Suspension:	KYB inverted 43mm telescopic fork, rebound and compression adjustable; 7.1 in. travel
Rear Suspension:	Aluminum swingarm, KYB WAD shock, preload and rebound adjustable; 7.1 in. travel
Front Brake:	4-piston Monoblock Brembo caliper, 310mm disc w/ ABS
Rear Brake:	1-piston floating ByBre caliper, 240mm disc w/ ABS
Wheels, Front/Rear:	Aluminum cross-spoked wheels; 19 x 2.50 in. / 17 x 3.50 in.
Tires, Front/Rear:	100/90-19 / 130/80-17
Rake/Trail:	28.1°/4.5 in.
Wheelbase:	57.7 in.
Seat Height:	33.3 in.
Fuel Capacity:	3.6 gal.
Claimed Average MPG:	61.9 mpg
Claimed Wet Weight:	393 lb.
Contact:	bmwmotorcycles.com

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A feeling may not accurately reflect the current state of affairs, but it almost certainly exists for good reason, even if that reason isn’t readily apparent. It’s very often essential to first understand how the feeling actually does make sense before trying to address how it doesn’t. This allows a person to maintain a realistic faith in their own intuitive and emotional reactions while also exercising enough analytic review to improve their accuracy and avoid counterproductive repetition and overgeneralization. In other words, any feeling probably has some legitimate justification, even if that justification comes from the past rather than the present. It would be unwise—and possibly quite dangerous—to ignore lessons learned, especially painful ones. Feelings can provide early alerts (positive or negative) before deliberative cognition catches on, so it’s important to not dismiss them out of hand. Yet it’s also quite problematic to ignore new information that indicates old learning ought to be updated and refined. Teasing apart past and present is key to optimal navigation of current events.

Feelings can be erroneous in other ways, too. They might be based on inaccurate perception or faulty reasoning. An example of this would be the fear of falling that new motorcyclists often experience when leaning their bikes. In other situations, their natural apprehension about defying gravity might be spot on and help them avoid unwanted contact with the ground, but their innate alarm system needs recalibration to account for the special physics of a single-track vehicle. Neural reeducation will likely involve incremental physical experimentation to test intellectually recognized principles, like an explanation of countersteering. Reflexive reactions, both physical and psychological, gradually accommodate the accumulating evidence of repeated experience at odds with previously held expectations. The person doesn’t forget how to avoid falling over while on foot, they just learn that a different set of rules applies to movement on two wheels. Consequently, they perceive lean angle while riding in a new way and their reasoning about it changes accordingly. Once again, feelings have been sorted on the basis of situational context, with more nuance and diversification.

Here’s yet another way feelings can diverge from facts. My sense of speed can be at variance with an objective measure of my pace. I may feel like I just turned in my very best lap during a track day practice session, but the stopwatch shows I was actually faster during a different outing. This might simply be a matter of inadequate precision, with my own organic timer being unable to match the performance of an electronic or mechanical device; no doubt I’ll have a larger margin of error. But that’s not the only issue. My subjective sense of speed will be the aggregate result of myriad data streams, not just the passage of time. I may have indeed reached a higher peak velocity on the back straight, and that stood out to me because it was exhilarating. However, I may have also been slower around several corners—maybe not enough for me to notice as I savored my performance on that back straight, but enough to offset that achievement in terms of my final lap time. There are other indirect sources of information I might factor into my calculation incorrectly. For instance, I might interpret a certain squirm from the bike as evidence I’ve found the edge of available traction, and therefore expect a superior result across the line. In actuality, that squirm may have been a manifestation of sloppy technique that slowed me down.

Likewise, one motorcycle may feel faster, but be slower. If I equate a hard lunge off the bottom with brute strength (and therefore speed), I may experience a torque-rich big-bore V-twin as quite mighty and perhaps even intimidatingly quick, even though it runs out of breath at relatively low rpm and really doesn’t generate a lot of velocity. Conversely, a high-revving inline four may feel puny and sluggish throughout the bottom half of the tach, but become extremely fast as it approaches redline. A machine can be deceptively fast or slow depending on how smoothly it accelerates and how stable and confidence inspiring it is at speed. Ironically, a genuinely faster bike can seem slower because it operates with less drama; it doesn’t set off the rider’s internal alarms and therefore feels more tame. Obviously, speed isn’t the only dimension we consider in our enjoyment of riding; it’s just the easiest for contrasting subjective and objective assessments. Another example would be weight. A heavier bike can feel lighter—maybe much lighter—depending on where it carries its heft and the specifics of its steering geometry, among other factors. Would you rather have the bike the scale says is lighter, or the one your body and mind consider lighter? This brings us to the next point.

The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes is brought to you by the MOA Foundation. You can join the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America quickly and easily to better take advantage of the Paul B Grant and Clark Luster programs mentioned in this episode.

We can talk about discrepancies between subjective and objective assessments in terms of the former’s “error,” but that doesn’t do justice to the value of feelings to a particular individual. I might prioritize an experience over cold, hard data. For example, I could have more fun on a bike that feels fast than one that is measurably faster (setting aside the fact no motorcycle is faster than its rider). Maybe I’d rather get my speed fix at 70 mph instead of 100 mph. More isn’t necessarily better, unless I’m competing on the racetrack where objective measures are all that matter. If I’m just interested in extracting maximum pleasure from my motorcycle, I’ll do well to ignore its spec sheet and concentrate on how I feel while riding it. As the old saying goes, “It’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast than to ride a fast bike slow.” My feeling may not be strictly factual in some way that could be measured with instruments and proven consistently across other riders’ evaluations, but that’s irrelevant. This is no different than how we judge relationships; Friend X may not tick all the boxes on some list of objectively desirable features, but we can still prefer their company over someone with a better scorecard.

Finally, here’s one more way feelings can be deceptive. We can opt for the feeling of power over genuine efficacy. If I’m working on a mechanical project and get frustrated by my difficulty getting two parts to fit together properly, I could bolster my sense of dominance and control by simply applying more force. I may break something as a result, which would ultimately prompt regret, but in the moment before causing damage, I’d feel ascendant, like I was showing those parts who’s boss. I’d feel that in my body, too, as my muscles flexed and strained in the struggle to make those parts submit to my will. But who really won that battle? I sure didn’t, even if we rule out the possibility those parts experienced any victorious joy. My feeling of power came at the expense of actually getting my way. Now I have to go buy new parts or repair the ones I broke. I’d have been much better off figuring out exactly what was wrong and tending to it. Maybe a little filing on a slightly misshapen edge would have allowed the slip fit I wanted. In the longer run, that would have fortified my sense of power, but in the moment it may have felt like submission, like I was bowing to yet another demand instead of making a demand of my own. This kind of thing certainly happens outside the garage, whether we’re talking about ham-fisted riding technique, impatient scheduling negotiations with riding buddies, or reckless line selection through a rock garden. We can indulge our desire to feel omnipotent by barreling ahead, even though there’s a high likelihood of not only causing damage, but taking damage ourselves. Ignoring potential consequences fortifies our sense of invincibility—until it doesn’t. Is it really a sign of weakness to approach problems and challenges with care? No, but it can feel that way to the more primitive, animalistic part of our psyche.

Ideally, we take the time to step back from our emotional reactions and see how much agreement exists between our minds and our guts. Some deep breaths can help in the heat of the moment, and conferring with trusted others might supply valuable consensus about the realities of the current situation. Our feelings deserve our respect and understanding, but not necessarily our obedience.

Mark Barnes is a clinical psychologist and motojournalist. To read more of his writings, check out his book Why We Ride: A Psychologist Explains the Motorcyclist’s Mind and the Love Affair Between Rider, Bike and Road, currently available in paperback through Amazon and other retailers.

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Both the R 1300 RT and RS are powered by a re-engineered 1,300cc air/liquid-cooled boxer engine, producing 145 horsepower at 7,750 RPM and 110 lb-ft of torque at 6,500 RPM. These are both significant improvements over the previous generation’s 136 hp and 105 lb-ft. BMW’s ShiftCam technology presents an impressive torque curve for solo or two-up riding. The engine’s 13.3:1 compression ratio and recalculated valve timing enhance smoothness and fuel efficiency, despite the increased power. A lightweight stainless steel 2-into-1 exhaust ensures compliance with future emissions standards while delivering a refined sound.

The optional Automatic Shift Assistant (ASA) is a standout feature for both models, automating clutch operation and gear shifts for effortless riding. In “D” mode, ASA delivers smooth, perfectly timed shifts. In “M” mode, manual shifts via the foot lever maintain dynamic control.

The Touring Icon: R 1300 RT

Priced at $22,495 (plus destination), the R 1300 RT holds up expectations of BMW’s long-distance touring focus on on comfort, stability and cutting-edge technology. “We’ve taken the touring icon to a new level—lighter, more accessible, and more dynamic,” said Harald Spagl, Project Manager. The new RT’s redesigned steel main frame and aluminum rear frame reduce weight and centralize mass, improving handling over its predecessor. The EVO Telelever front and EVO Paralever rear suspension, with 5.9 and 6.2 inches of travel respectively ensure stability. Performance and stability are enhanced by optional Dynamic Chassis Adjustment (DCA).

As always, the RT’s design prioritizes comfort for both rider and passenger. A 10.25-inch TFT display with navigation, standard Riding Assistant (Active Cruise Control, Frontal Collision Warning, Lane Change Warning), and riding modes (Rain, Road, Eco) greet the rider. Optional Dynamic and Dynamic Pro modes increase over-the-road options. The Comfort Passenger Package, with heated seats, grips AND BACKREST, elevates two-up touring, while expandable luggage (27–33 liter side cases, 39–54 liter top cases) adapts to city or highway needs. A low 30.7-inch seat height and adjustable ergonomics mean just about any rider can take advantage of the new RT.

BMW has incorporated its experiences with the S 1000 RR into the R 1300 RT in the form of adjustable side trim and optional Variable Wind Deflectors to optimize airflow. A cylinder fairing keeps feet dry, and a Prop-Up Aid simplifies center stand use. Four color styles (Alpine White, Style Triple Black, Style Impulse, and Option 719 Camargue) offer aesthetic variety.

The Sport-Tourer: R 1300 RS

Starting at $17,150 (plus destination), the R 1300 RS is a sportier counterpart, prioritizing (somewhat) dynamic performance above touring capability. “The RS is designed for dynamic riding without sacrificing comfort,” said Hauke Glässing, Project Manager. Its 145-hp engine matches the RT’s, but is tuned for agility. To further enhance performance, the RS is equipped with a new 47mm upside-down fork (5.5 inches travel) and BMW’s popular EVO Paralever II rear suspension (5.1 inches travel). The RS introduces a world-first, a general production upside-down fork with adjustable spring rate via optional Dynamic Suspension Adjustment (DSA).

The RS’s sporty ergonomics position the rider forward over the front wheel, with a wider, flatter handlebar for better control during aggressive riding. Its 6.5-inch TFT screen offers connectivity, though it’s about 60% the size of the RT’s. Standard features mirror the RT’s, but the Style Performance variant adds an even sportier suspension, DTC-Shift, and precision milled components for track-inspired flair. Luggage options (26–29 liter side cases, 39 liter top case) and a 5-to-8-liter tank bag support touring.

The RS’s aerodynamic fairing is optimized for its top speed of 152 MPH. A compact LED headlight and optional Headlight Pro for cornering illumination enhance lighting and visibility. Four color styles (Racing Blue, Style Triple Black, Option 719 Cuyamaca, and Style Performance) cater to bold tastes.

True to their model history, the R 1300 RT and R 1300 RS, share the same 145-hp, 110 lb-ft boxer engine and optional ASA, but they have different purposes, price tags and design cues to cater to a wide variety of riders. The RT, priced at $22,495, is a premium tourer built for long-distance comfort, boasting a larger 10.25-inch TFT display with a Connectivity Hub and advanced safety features like Lane Change Warning, which the RS lacks. The RS, at $17,150, targets sport-touring enthusiasts with its agile handling and lower cost, achieving a higher top speed of 152 mph due to its lighter aluminum die-cast rear frame and sportier tuning. Suspension systems further differentiate them: the RT’s EVO Telelever and Paralever prioritize stability, while the RS’s 47mm upside-down fork and EVO Paralever II offer precision, especially with DSA’s adjustable spring rate, a first for production motorcycles. Ergonomically, the RT’s forward-leaning yet relaxed posture, with a minimum 30.7-inch seat height and passenger-focused features like the Comfort Passenger Package, suits extended two-up journeys. The aggressive, front-wheel-oriented stance and 31.1-inch seat height of the RS enhance control for solo rides, with less emphasis on passenger comfort.

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