Mitt 808 Traveler Shows Why American Tourers Are Huge

Mitt Motorcycles, the Spanish motorcycle brand, has recently launched its new Mitt 808 Traveler grand tourer, whose origins are in China.

In fact, the 808 Traveler is simply a re-badged Xiangshuai XS 800, as pointed out by Motorrad, and means Mitt’s newest offering to Europe is a relatively under-powered grand tourer in the style of something like a Harley-Davidson Road Glide Limited. 

The 808 features an 800cc liquid-cooled V-twin engine producing a pretty underwhelming 60bhp, which is almost 30bhp less than the 755cc parallel motor Honda uses in its XL750 Transalp and CB750 Hornet, for example. It’s 53lb ft of torque puts it about 2lb ft down on the 55lb ft of that Honda motor, too, but it does at least produce those figures at fairly low engine speeds: peak power is at 6,500rpm, and peak torque comes at 5,550rpm, compared to 9,500rpm and 7,250rpm for the Honda engine. That makes for slightly less grim reading than the peak figures alone, but the issue of weight is a sizable one: 332kg. To continue the Honda analogy, the Transalp tips the scales at 208kg - and that’s at the kerb, the figure given by Mitt for the 808 is “unladen”.

Obviously, outright performance isn’t really the point of a grand tourer, but it at least needs enough engine to mean the rider can relax into a soft cushion of torque that effectively renders the gear lever redundant, and that’s sort of why the American GT bikes all have huge engines, often more than double the size of the 808’s. The aforementioned Road Glide Limited, for example, uses a 1,868cc twin: more than double the displacement, and more than double the torque. The Harley has 100kg more to shift than the 808, but with so much more engine it would make the Mitt feel like a Grom. Would you like to cross Europe on a Grom?

Moving back to the 808’s specifications, it comes with an inverted front fork and twin, adjustable rear shocks. It also comes with a bunch of long-range accessories such as charging ports and padding in the top box to make it an effective backrest for a passenger, as well as four speakers split equally between the front and rear.

The Mitt 808 Traveler is currently only available in Spain, where it costs €11,995, or just over £10,000. Motorrad reports it will be on the way to Germany soon, but in the UK an arrival will not come before the establishment of a Mitt dealer network here.

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