OVERLAND OVERHAUL
There is no point in doing things by halves, so Triumph gave itself three clear objectives when redesigning the Tiger 1200 range. Dynamic road handling, superior touring ability and genuine off-road capability. To tick all these boxes on one bike is possible, but that one bike wouldn’t appeal to every single buyer. As a result, there are four models to choose from in Australia. There are two road-biased versions in the Tiger 1200 GT Pro and GT Explorer, then there are two off-road oriented versions in the Tiger 1200 Rally Pro and Rally Explorer. We attended the Australian launch and saddled up on the two Tiger 1200 Rally off-road models.
Carrying on the theme of not doing things by halves, we set off on a five-day adventure, starting from Adelaide in South Australia. We then headed north to Arkaroola Village at the northern end of the Flinders Ranges before making our way south-east to Mildura in western Victoria in a bid to cover as many different and tough conditions that would really put the Tiger 1200 Rally to the ultimate test.
This is a ground-up redesign with a 25kg weight saving over the previous Tiger Explorer. Starting with the chassis, the tubular-steel main frame came in for a full re-think, and the bolt-on rear subframe and front subframe are made from aluminium and magnesium respectively. The pillion ’peg hangers are also removable.
The single-sided swingarm was ditched for a dual-sided tri-link setup, which saves
