Honda CRF1100L Africa Twin Adventure Sports

The overall looks and tall stance of the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports make it feel very purposeful for adventure touring on two wheels. Seeking inspiration from Honda’s Dakar Rally motorcycles, the stance and design of the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports look like how a proper adventure tourer should look in the very first place.

The Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports has a tallish front fascia with sunglasses-shaped dual semi-rounded LED headlamps with daytime running LEDs. Unlike the base version of the motorcycle, this Adventure Sports version gets a taller and fully-adjustable transparent windscreen above the headlamp as well as auxiliary lamps on the broad-looking black plastic chin below the headlamps. While the edgy-looking front fender design is the same as that of the standard version, the golden finish for the front forks makes the motorcycle look even more premium.

Compared to the standard version of the motorcycle, the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports gets sharper and bigger looking fuel tank extensions, bigger fuel tank, handlebar crash guards and engine bash plate and covered side panels below the rider seat. Like most adventure tourers, the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports also has a beefy-looking design around the fuel tank, which becomes slimmer as soon as you move towards the rear profile of the motorcycle.

The long pannier holders and top box platform, high-rising side-mounted exhaust and spoke wheels with off-road spec tyres also enhance the adventure tourer appeal of the motorcycle. In the Pearl Glare White option, the motorcycle also gets a golden finish for the spoke wheels. At the back, the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports shares its minimalist LED tail lamp, LED turn indicators and rear fender with the standard version of the motorcycle.

The comprehensive rider’s cockpit of the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports comprises a large rectangular 6.5-inch TFT touchscreen instrument console with Apple Carplay and Bluetooth compatibility and an additional small LCD screen for the basic data of the instrument console. This cockpit, along with the meaty and premium switchgear, makes the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports a desirable motorcycle to be on.

The Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports shares its fantastically-tuned suspension combination of Cartridge-type Showa 45mm inverted telescopic forks with dial-style preload adjuster and DF adjustments at the front and pro-link fully-adjustable mono-shock from Showa at the rear, with the standard version. However, here, the front suspension has electronic adjustments for the compression and rebound damping and has a taller suspension travel of 230mm. Riding on a purposeful set of 90/90-21 front tyre and 150/70-18 rear tyre, the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports has dual 310mm front discs and a single 256mm rear disc at the rear for braking purposes.

Powering the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports is the biggest twin-cylinder engine from the Japanese two-wheeler maker – a four-stroke, liquid-cooled, 8-valve, 270-degree parallel-twin, 1083cc mill. Inspired by the technological prowess used in Dakar Rally-spec motorcycles, this engine pumps out 102 PS of maximum power and 104 Nm of peak torque output. With a 6-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports returns a fuel economy figure of 20.5 kmpl.

The extensive list of safety features and electronic riding aids in the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports comprises six riding modes (tour, urban, gravel, off-road, User 1 and User 2 modes), dual-channel ABS with off-road ABS mode, Rear Lift Control, Wheelie Control, Cruise Control, Honda Selectable Torque Control and a 6-axis IMU.

All the technological and visual enhancements the Honda CRF 1100 Africa Twin Adventure Sports gets over the standard version of the motorcycle make the extra premium worth going for the former.