Yamaha XTZE 1200 Super Ténéré Raid Edition 2020 — Specifications

Have you ever felt that call of the open road, that itch for distant horizons that pushes you to leave the reassuring pavement for trails that no one speaks of? Yamaha, for its part, heard it. And the answer is this XTZ1200 Super Ténéré Raid Edition, a travel beast designed not for Saturday’s café, but for finish lines that smell of warm sand and hot oil. At €17,000, it’s not an insignificant option; it’s a commitment to extreme adventure, a mechanical gamble against immensity.

Beneath its apparent sobriety – it takes a lynx’s eye to distinguish the carbon fiber panels from the standard version – lies an implacable logic of equipment. Yamaha thought of the rider facing the simoom with a tall screen and lateral deflectors. It thought of the engine, this 1199 cm3 twin-cylinder capable of 112 horsepower and 116.7 Nm of torque, protecting it from deadly rocks with an aluminum skid plate. It even thought of the bivouac with its 37-liter aluminum panniers, reinforced and ready for the worst. Yet, facing a KTM 1290 Adventure R or a BMW R 1250 GS Adventure, one can’t help but find the engine protection a little timid. Where are the crash bars worthy of the name? For a raid, it’s a surprising, almost guilty omission.

Where the Super Ténéré Raid Edition scores points is in its overall design as a grand adventure touring machine. Its 23-liter tank promises serious stages, and the shaft drive is a blessing of reliability and minimal maintenance on long journeys. The 43 mm inverted fork and shock absorber, both offering 190 mm of travel and controlled electronically, ensure remarkable comfort and adaptability. But let’s admit it, with its 265 kg fully fueled and a seat height of 84.5 cm, it’s not the most agile in pure technical riding. It’s a locomotive, stable, powerful, reassuring, but not an acrobat.

So, who is this Raid Edition for? Certainly not for the beginner, intimidated by its size and price. It’s the mount of the experienced globetrotter, the one who aims for continental crossings rather than acrobatic single-tracks. It is made to swallow kilometers of rocky trails and ribbons of asphalt with the same quiet authority. It embodies a certain vision of adventure, less radical than that of KTM, more focused on endurance and prepared travel. A superbly equipped tool, perhaps a little conservative, but of formidable efficiency for charting your course to the end of the map.