EC300 atop French magazine shootout!

Thats it I'm selling my bike.I so sincerly value the opinion of:D a bunch of beer swilling, flatland, penal colony desendents whose contribution to culture includes fine red fighting wines, olivia newton john and helen reddy.

Hey thats not nice widebear.
Here I am in the great land of Oz , sitting reading this while drinking a beer .
The mag may be bias and as I ride a ec300 I reckon it probably is, but no need to get nasty.
You may be right about the first part of your description of us though...:D
 
You will never find an Un-biased opinon in a dirt rag ever anyways.

I know I like my linked rear compared to a KTM and my friends think its better than linkage.

Its all about what you like. Too many testers spend too much time on one bike to give good reviews on another make.

I belive its all about you. Personaly right now I am making the Gasgas more aggresive while if I had a TM 300 I would be taming it down and a KTM I would be modding suspesion right away.
 
I am at the age where i don't care what anyone else thinks.

I'd buy a TM just for that baby blue color. I wouldn't care how "good" it is.

I couldn't ride my xr250 at the limit, let alone my GG.

I'll stick with GG, though, primarily because of the quality of the people involved with the brand. Top notch people, from the factory, to dealers to those who write on this board. Why go anywhere else?
 
I believe it has alot to do with what conditions, climate, set up,test pilots, and what ever other contributing factors there are that will help of hinder a machine in each test as tm_enduro was pointing out.

We all know the Husky300 is the same bike as their 250 thats been virtually unchanged for years. Just little adjustments like the Gasser. But from what I hear the new displacment makes it a fire breather of a motor and probably kicked ass in those Australian conditions.

I haven't seen the Gas Gas test pics but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess it wasn't a DE with the lighter fly wheel, who knows it may have even had the euro cat exhaust on it.

Looks like alot of French are gonna drop some dime on a Gas Gas and the Australian riders are gonna buy orange. Boy I feel bad for the Aussies! :D
Bottom line, Mag Shootouts will never be the best means of choosing your bike. I personally don't like Shootouts, cause It can really hurt a brands sales. Machines are so close now it's all just a popularity contest.
Who's got the cash this year.....

Roscoe
 
I also juts thought about the jetting issues that Gasgas seem to have from factory. I dont know if they fixed them yet (2008, 2009) but that could be a huge difference.
 
Hey thats not nice widebear.
Here I am in the great land of Oz , sitting reading this while drinking a beer .
The mag may be bias and as I ride a ec300 I reckon it probably is, but no need to get nasty.
You may be right about the first part of your description of us though...:D
You need to get up here mate to the great white north for for some real riding and skiing and then kick back with some decent canuck beer instead of that kangaroo piss that passes off as adult refreshment, cmon over , me and the boys will get you hooked up for some epic s>^t.As an added bonus you can actually pass out drunk on the ground here without getting bittin to death by some god awfull poisen something or other. Bears and cougars of course are another story. Well the cougars are known to mostly hunt the local cowboy bar scene so its really just the bears you have to watch out for.
 
Sounds good to me mate .
Just have to wait till the kids are a little older and I may even take you up on that.The way all the ride spots are getting closed here we may even move there.
Cheers Mark
 
I guess a positive of this worldwide economic condition is that the lefty bottom feeders are going to be restricted the tax doller funding they need to save us from ourselves as the economic health of the world takes precedence over Al Gore syle self serving, globaly marketed yellow science. Even the wealthy twelve cylider driving patrons of the planet are now going to choose their daily latte's over tax increases for recycling costs when it comes down to their harder pressed dollers and cents .As a Canadian and casual observer of U.S. politics I could'nt help but notice that Obama has selected that old blight on the human spirit and author of the desert protection act, Diane Feinstein to some cushy post on his team. As much as it may be conscrued that I'm highjacking this post for my rant I do firmly believe that each and everyone of us needs to become even more political in order to save our way of life as well as our beloved sport.Ok I'm done i feel better now.
 
ROFLMAO!!! :D

Thats it I'm selling my bike.I so sincerly value the opinion of a bunch of beer swilling, flatland, penal colony desendents whose contribution to culture includes fine red fighting wines, olivia newton john and helen reddy.
 
Harry ried is actually try to jam through (i.e. not go through the require public hearings etc etc) an additional 1 million acres of land to be added to existing wilderness areas or create new ones .... one million acres that will only be able to be accessed by foot or on horseback ... Some republican is trying to hold it up on procedural issues. I'm pulling for the guy, but I bet the dems get their way in the end.
 
They mentioned the GasGas was a good bike for trailriders .

That info made me happy when I read it, shet I thought an XR250 was a "good trail bike":confused:

I believe it has alot to do with what conditions, climate, set up,test pilots, and what ever other contributing factors there are that will help of hinder a machine in each test as tm_enduro was pointing out.

We all know the Husky300 is the same bike as their 250 thats been virtually unchanged for years. Just little adjustments like the Gasser. But from what I hear the new displacment makes it a fire breather of a motor and probably kicked ass in those Australian conditions.

I haven't seen the Gas Gas test pics but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess it wasn't a DE with the lighter fly wheel, who knows it may have even had the euro cat exhaust on it.


I was not surprised the EC300 was down in the engine test (it was an EC model by the look) but the Gasser got hammered in the handling test as well. Surely good suspension in the northern hemisphere is good suspension in the southern hemisphere. Maybe its a water down a plug hole thing :eek:

I personally don't like Shootouts, cause It can really hurt a brands sales.

Doesnt do your resale value much good as well:mad:

I guess we are all the same. When a test is favourable to our ride, it means the testers must know their shet and got it spot on. When it goes the other way the testers must be biased or jetting or... Human nature I suppose.
 
Hey thats not nice widebear.
Here I am in the great land of Oz , sitting reading this while drinking a beer .
The mag may be bias and as I ride a ec300 I reckon it probably is, but no need to get nasty.
You may be right about the first part of your description of us though...:D
So is just about every mag that covers KTM!If you were a newby to the sport,in america anyways,you would think KTM was the only enduro bike on the market.
 
The Australian Magazine that was quoted before seems to have a bit of a grudge on the Gasser's. The 450's always sturggled in their opinion, and used to cope it a fair bit. But at the start of this year, they did a standalone test and said it was a good thing, so now, they've decided to pay out on the 300, from the same manufacturer who won the '06 300cc two stroke shootout in that magazine.

ADB used to be a great magazine where unbiased information could be sourced, but it has lost a fair amount of conditioning in the last year, with Husky always being questioned over their financial problems all those years ago, while KTM never a second thought because of theirs. Just little things like that. They seem to be running a pretty strong KTM bias at the moment.
 
I know that the Gas Gas importer in Australia had a key employee leave that used to set up all the test bikes for the magazines, he was a former racer and had a lot of experience with all the gasser range....this might of had some reflection upon the outcome of the test in Australia??
 
Well to me it doest matter what the mags say. I've been ridding since I was 9 years old (that is a while back) and I am very happy with GG. I "clicked" with the bikes and the confidence it gives me, I will never look else where.

Plus I have just found a new respect for the French :)
 
The discussion going on here is interesting as Mark and I are preparing an EC300 and FSR450 for a major off-road US magazine test (an EC300 is already being tested by another magazine.)

We've (GasGas USA and GoFasters) have spent a lot of time (and money) over the last two years trying to get the GasGas name back out there but often find ourselves limiting our involvment with tests as the "Big 5" (Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and KTM) have their advertising revenues speaking for them which usually biases most test results.

It's interesting that even though our numbers are small in comparison to the Big 5, GasGas has seen significant increase in sales over the last two years while the rest of the industry, at least in the US, has seen record declines.

While this is the last time I'll comment on the upcoming tests in this forum (it's not fair for the magazines involved with the testing to publicly announce our the set up on the bikes they are getting ) I would take PM's with any input on relavant set up on the current new generation (07 and newer)GasGas 250s, 300s and 450s that members of this forum may have.
 
I find most of these alleged journalists mostly just pay lip sevice to the smaller manufacturers at the risk of offending their primary sponsers. but I also remember once upon a time when ktm's presence in relation to the japanese jugernaut was considered the lonely stepchild.but that was before the internet when one dimensional printed journalism ruled. I would much rather contribute on a cash basis to a open interactive forum like this one where at least I have a voice rather than purchase a $5.00 glossy monthly catalog where he with the gold dictates the content, same old getting shoved down my throat.Those crappy glossy catalogs . Now those mags are going the way of the dinosaur and pontiac aztec, all i can say is good ridence.
 
From what I gather, ADB does their tests in pretty wide open conditions. This is not a Gasser's strong point. It doesn't surprise me that it is rated low, but hey, sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Personally, I gave up on magazine tests a long time ago. I talk to friends about bikes, and try to ride a bike before I buy it.
 
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