Poised at a red light, the GS stands tall and imposing, especially if it happens to be casually splattered with mud from, say, a weekend of trail riding. Don’t wash it down too soon after your excursion, as the muck only adds street cred… but leave it too long, and you become in danger of being a poseur. Choose wisely, the balance is delicate. When the light turns green, the clutch engages easily and the GS lurches forward urgently with quick twist of the throttle. There’s a lot of power on tap—not quite as much as Ducati’s superbike-sourced 158 hp mill and less power-to-weight ratio than the KTM, which is not aided by the BMW’s incremental weight gain with this iteration. But there’s also enough low and midrange grunt to easily lift the front wheel when accelerating hard with the electronics disabled. There’s a dizzying suite of assistance systems at play in the new GS, especially when equipped with the optional Ride Modes Pro package which adds a dynamic traction control system, lean-sensitive ABS, and hill start control pro, which enables personalized settings for how and when the parking brake engages.