Great Wall’s new Souo motorcycle brand is one of the most ambitious launches we’ve seen in years, leaping straight in at the deep end with an eight-cylinder tourer aimed squarely at the Honda Gold Wing. Now we’ve finally got some figures for the performance and weight to see how it stacks up against that lofty benchmark.
If you missed the launch of the Souo S2000ST and S2000GL tourers (which rival the Gold Wing and Gold Wing Tour, respectively), you can catch up on our previous coverage here. The short version is that they use the world’s first purpose-made flat-eight motorcycle engine in a package that aims to outdo the Gold Wing on every front. More cylinders, more capacity, an eight-speed dual-clutch transmission instead of the Honda’s seven-speed. Wherever Souo has been able to take it up a notch, it’s attempted to do so.
But while the official launch confirmed much of the bike’s technology, it lacked key figures for the bike’s power and weight. Now those numbers have emerged thanks to Chinese type-approval documents, which show the two versions of the S2000 have been given the green light for use on the road in advance of production starting, which is expected in the next couple of months.
So how much power does a 2-liter, eight-cylinder motorcycle make? The answer is 152 hp. Not, perhaps, as much as you might expect in a world where liter superbikes are passing the 200 hp mark, but the Souo’s engine is clearly designed for low-end grunt rather than screaming peak power. The engine’s code name, GW8P68MYL, contains clues to its internal layout. The “GW” shows it’s made in-house by Great Wall Motor, while the initial “8″ is the cylinder count (eight of them). The second figure, “68,” represents the cylinder bore in millimeters, and combined with the engine’s capacity of 1,999cc means we can work out that the stroke is a fraction under 69mm. A nearly square set of dimensions that show the motor is tuned toward torque rather than peak power. The Gold Wing also has a square bore and stroke, 73 x 73mm, for the same reason, and puts out 125 hp from its 1,833cc capacity.
So the Souo is more powerful than the Gold Wing. But it needs to be, as it’s also bigger and heavier than Honda’s behemoth. Let’s start with the weight. Like the Gold Wing, the S2000 comes in two forms: the ST, with side cases but no top box, and the full-dress GL complete with an armchair of a pillion seat and a top case to rival the Gold Wing Tour. The lighter ST weighs in at 992 pounds ready-to-ride, which is 190 pounds more than a standard Gold Wing, and the full-on GL version comes in at 1,016 pounds, 171 pounds more than the 845-pound Gold Wing Tour. According to the approval documents, the flat-eight engine can hurl all that mass down the road at 130 mph.
The rest of the dimensions explain how it reaches that weight. Both versions of the S2000 are larger than a Gold Wing, with an overall length of 104.7 inches, 1.8 inches longer than the Gold Wing Tour, and a wheelbase of 71.3 inches, which is 4.4 inches more than a Wing. They measure 37.4 inches wide, 1.8 inches more than the DCT version of the Gold Wing, and 60.6 inches tall, 4.2 inches more than the Honda. The type approval also confirms that the bikes run on the same wheel and tire sizes as a Gold Wing with a 130/70-18 front and 200/55-16 rear.
Whether bigger really is better remains to be seen, but it’s going to be interesting to see how the world’s first flat-eight motorcycle lives up to a yardstick like the Gold Wing. And will Honda feel the need to respond by reestablishing the Wing as the biggest bike out there?
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