WHO BUILDS THE KING OF ADVENTURE MOTORCYCLES?

Pan America vs. the World

By: Andy Weightman  /  November 2025

There was a time when choosing an adventure motorcycle was fairly simple.

You bought a BMW GS.

Maybe you bought a KTM if you wanted something a little more aggressive. If you were planning on disappearing into the wilderness and didn’t particularly care when you came back, there was always a Honda or Yamaha waiting for you.

Then Harley-Davidson did something nobody expected.

They showed up with a 150-horsepower adventure motorcycle.

And suddenly the ADV neighborhood got a lot more interesting.

Welcome to the modern adventure-bike arms race, where motorcycles weighing hundreds of pounds are expected to carve mountain highways, cross states before dinner, hammer down gravel roads and occasionally convince their owners that the muddy two-track disappearing into the trees is probably a perfectly reasonable shortcut.

So who is actually building the best adventure motorcycle?

That’s where things get interesting.

HARLEY-DAVIDSON PAN AMERICA 1250 SPECIAL

Milwaukee Went Exploring

When Harley-Davidson introduced the Pan America, plenty of riders wondered whether Milwaukee had wandered into the wrong meeting.

Harley built cruisers.

Harley built touring motorcycles.

Harley did not build motorcycles designed to charge down dirt roads.

Except now they do.

At the heart of the Pan America 1250 Special is Harley-Davidson’s Revolution Max 1250 engine, producing around 150 horsepower and 94 lb-ft of torque.

That’s serious power.

Add semi-active suspension, sophisticated rider electronics, available laced wheels and Harley’s clever Adaptive Ride Height system, and the Pan America becomes much more than a touring motorcycle wearing hiking boots.

Adaptive Ride Height is particularly clever. The motorcycle can lower itself as you come to a stop and return to normal ride height once you’re underway.

Anyone who has ever stopped a tall ADV bike on uneven ground and suddenly discovered that their left boot is searching for Earth will understand why that matters.

The Pan America’s weakness is serious off-road terrain. With roughly 6.9 inches of ground clearance, there are competitors better suited to attacking rocks, deep ruts and technical trails.

But for riders covering hundreds of highway miles before turning onto gravel, forest roads and mountain passes?

The Pan America makes a very convincing argument.

BMW R 1300 GS

The Benchmark

BMW has been playing this game for decades.

The GS isn’t simply another adventure motorcycle. It’s the motorcycle much of the category has spent years chasing.

The current R 1300 GS uses BMW’s famous boxer engine producing roughly 145 horsepower and 110 lb-ft of torque.

But horsepower isn’t really the GS party trick.

Balance is.

The BMW manages to be comfortable on interstate highways, surprisingly agile through mountain corners and remarkably competent once the pavement disappears.

BMW has also packed the GS with enough available technology to make some automobiles nervous.

Electronic suspension.

Multiple riding modes.

Advanced ABS and traction control.

Radar-assisted features on appropriately equipped models.

And the R 1300 GS Adventure can be configured into a genuine continent-crossing machine.

If someone said:

“You have one motorcycle. Tomorrow you’re leaving Montana and riding to Alaska.”

The GS would be very difficult to argue against.

It isn’t necessarily the best motorcycle at every individual task.

It may simply be the motorcycle that’s extremely good at almost all of them.

KTM 1390 SUPER ADVENTURE R

Somebody Gave the Dirt Bike Engineers Too Much Coffee

Then there’s KTM.

Apparently somebody looked at enormous adventure motorcycles and asked:

“What if we made one with around 170 horsepower and encouraged people to jump it?”

The KTM 1390 Super Adventure R is arguably the hooligan of the big ADV category.

Its V-twin produces approximately 173 PS, and KTM gives the bike around 9.45 inches of suspension travel, 21/18-inch wheels and approximately 9.5 inches of ground clearance.

Those numbers tell you exactly where KTM’s priorities lie.

Dirt.

The Super Adventure R is still perfectly capable of devouring highway miles, but once the pavement ends, its personality becomes obvious.

This motorcycle wants the ugly road.

The washed-out road.

The road with the sign that says:

ROAD NOT MAINTAINED BEYOND THIS POINT.

For some riders, that’s not a warning.

That’s an invitation.

DUCATI DESERTX

The Italian Rally Bike

Ducati approached the adventure category differently.

Instead of simply building another gigantic touring motorcycle capable of traveling on dirt, Ducati leaned toward rally-bike DNA.

The DesertX uses the classic adventure combination of 21-inch front and 18-inch rear wheels, generous suspension travel and significantly more ground clearance than the Pan America.

The newer DesertX V2 produces roughly 110 horsepower, which sounds almost restrained compared with the horsepower monsters above.

Until you remember something important.

Horsepower isn’t everything in the dirt.

Weight, suspension, geometry and rider confidence matter enormously.

The DesertX feels much closer to a giant dirt bike than some of the heavyweight adventure-tourers.

If your adventures regularly involve wondering whether the road you’re following technically qualifies as a road anymore, the Ducati deserves serious attention.

HONDA AFRICA TWIN

Less Drama. More Destination.

Honda takes another approach.

The Africa Twin doesn’t try to dominate the spec sheet.

It doesn’t need 170 horsepower.

It doesn’t need to turn every gravel road into a Dakar qualifying stage.

Instead, Honda built a motorcycle around something adventure riders value tremendously:

Dependability.

The Africa Twin has earned a reputation as a capable long-distance machine that remains comfortable when the pavement disappears.

It’s the motorcycle equivalent of the friend who doesn’t talk much but somehow has exactly the tool you need when everybody else is standing around staring at the broken thing.

Sometimes that’s precisely what you want 600 miles from home.

YAMAHA TÉNÉRÉ 700

The Argument for Less

Then Yamaha quietly asks an uncomfortable question:

Do adventure motorcycles really need to be this complicated?

The Ténéré 700 has substantially less horsepower than the heavyweight machines.

It’s also lighter, simpler and easier to manage when the trail becomes difficult.

Because here’s the dirty little secret of adventure motorcycles:

Eventually, you’re probably going to drop one.

And suddenly the difference between picking up a middleweight Yamaha and wrestling a fully loaded heavyweight ADV bike out of a muddy rut becomes extremely important.

The Ténéré isn’t trying to win the technology competition.

It’s trying to get you there.

And back.

SO WHO WINS?

That’s the problem.

There isn’t one winner.

There are different kinds of adventure riders.

If your world is roughly 70% pavement and 30% dirt, the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special and BMW R 1300 GS are extremely compelling.

If you want a nearly equal combination of pavement and serious dirt capability, the Ducati DesertX starts looking awfully attractive.

If your idea of adventure involves attacking difficult terrain aboard a motorcycle with absurd amounts of horsepower, the KTM 1390 Super Adventure R may be your machine.

If reliability and remote travel matter more than winning the horsepower war, look hard at the Honda Africa Twin.

And if your adventures increasingly involve actual trails rather than gravel highways, the Yamaha Ténéré 700 makes a powerful argument for leaving some weight and horsepower at home.

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE?

Harley-Davidson belongs in this conversation.

That might be the most interesting part of the entire comparison.

A company synonymous with cruisers and heavyweight touring motorcycles walked into one of the most competitive motorcycle categories in the world and built something genuinely capable of standing alongside BMW, KTM, Ducati, Honda and Yamaha.

The Pan America isn’t simply “good for a Harley.”

It’s a legitimate adventure motorcycle.

And depending on how you ride, it might be exactly the right one.

THE ALL IMPORTANT QUESTION

Here’s where we turn it over to you.

You’ve got seven days.

One motorcycle.

Your route includes interstate, mountain pavement, gravel, forest roads and at least one stretch where your GPS looks at you and basically says:

Good luck, buddy.

Which key are you grabbing?

Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 Special?

BMW R 1300 GS?

KTM 1390 Super Adventure R?

Ducati DesertX?

Honda Africa Twin?

Yamaha Ténéré 700?

And more importantly…

Where are you taking it?

Tell us what you’re riding and where you’d point the front wheel.

Keep the Good Times Rolling.

ON2