Enduro and trail fanatics have been waiting for it for a year, and their patience has been rewarded with the arrival on Canadian soil of the G450X - a street-legal machine that is in fact a ferocious off-road competitor ready to give the category's battle-hardened leaders a run for their money in top level Enduro races, as well a act as a great dirt bike for lucky amateur riders.

The G450X has arrived with some original concepts and do well in Canadian competition.

Fine tuned in Europe for the past two years and winner of the 2008 German and European Enduro championships, the G450X lands here just in time for the all-new-for 2009 Canadian Enduro Championship, as well as for various off-road race series organized by regional associations across the country.

When designers have carte blanche
The brand-new G450X offers up a sophisticated blend of technologies inherited from the K1300-Series engine and the BMW F1 technology group as well. The designers created a light, durable and well handling chassis, and a reliable, powerful engine with gobs of low-end torque, wrapped up in a simple easy-to-maintain package. And with the help of the valiant Guy Giroux (It was -7oc when we tested the bike), 15-time Quebec Champion and three-time Canadian Enduro Champion, we established that the mix is effective and that this is one mean machine ready for prime time.

The road-ready side of the 450X means that the machine comes with turn signals, a catalytic converter, an electric starter and a balance shaft to reduce the large one-cylinder's vibrations. The mill, designed by BMW and built by Kymco in Taiwan, delivers nothing less than 51 ponies in its street-legal North American version. It also boasts enough torque to satisfy top-level professional riders, and the clutch and transmission smoothly transfer torque to the rear wheel.

The Öhlins shock and the Marzocchi fork worked well during our test despite the frigid conditions and icy trail.