NOVEMBER 2025

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Praiseworthy Début

Finally, we have an adventure sport bike from TVS Motor. It has been long overdue, as TVS has been racing motorcycles in motocross and rallying for more than 40 years. Having built off-road competition motorcycles for over three decades, the company should be best equipped to make an adventure sport bike with all its experience compared to other Indian manufacturers.

The TVS Apache RTX is big for a 310-cc motorcycle. It does not use the same engine as the RR310, and the RTR310 is derived from BMW. It is powered by an all-new engine designed and developed in-house by TVS that was unveiled at last year’s Moto Soul Festival in Goa. You will find the RTX first ride report in this very issue.

Dual-purpose motorcycles are most suitable for our country due to the poor quality of the road surface everywhere, and long-travel suspension gives some relief to the rider’s back. There is hardly a road in the country free from potholes or sharp joints between two concrete slabs. The manholes either tend to protrude by three to four inches or nestle in a hollow three to four inches below the road surface, giving the rider a severe jolt in the back. To top all these, the traffic policemen stand on the road to ask if one has re-registered the bike and paid the road tax (and the green tax for a bike that has completed 15 years), or if the bike is registered in another state. Ironically, the same policeman will not stop a family of three or four on a two-wheeler or some goons riding down the wrong way.

It is very funny. If you are talking on the mobile phone while driving a car, the police will fine you with alacrity, which is good, but a two-wheeler rider with his phone stuck between his shoulder and his ear and talking animatedly on the go invites neither a reprimand nor a punitive action.

Aspi Bhathena

Editor