First off, Craypot it is a bit cruel of you posting pictures of your lovely 690, something not yet available to us poor souls here in LOS.....
I have owned a BMW 1150GS Adventure, as well as a KTM 950 Adventure at the same time. I did nearly all the maintenance work on both bikes myself, including rebuilding both bikes back from major crashes. ( Except for that tricky valve adjustment Snail did on the KTM ). Overall I found the KTM to be more user friendly, and overall better engineered. In four years of beating it around Asia, it never failed to make forward progress unless the tires were flat or it had a tank of bad gas......
I do not want to piss off the BMW guys, but I had many problems with service on my BMW. The dealer network here is simply a joke. There were design flaws in the bike with parts failing. Guess that was my foolishness of buying a first year model. The bike was simply too complex to be worked on by Thai mechanics that had been trained in Germany for a few weeks. After I swore to myself I would never buy a BMW again.
To me the KTM would be far more suitable for the Thai market, as it is much simpler, and more rugged. I test rode the 690 SM at the dealer in Penang, and thought it was the best bike I had ever ridden. Light as a feather, and the front end was coming up on each gear shift...
So if we are casting votes, put me down for a 690 Enduro or better yet the Adventure model if it ever comes out !!!!
To me pricing is a bit of an issue. Because basically BMW was here first, they have a bit of a sweetheart deal on the import tax enabling them to sell their bikes at a price not that much higher than in the west. My friend Peter has a Yamaha R1 he brought over here from America. He said the price that Yamaha here sells the same bike for is almost exactly twice as much. I am not exactly a cheapskate, but it does seem a bit painful to pay twice as much for the privilege of riding a big bike here in Thailand........
