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The debut of the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250 was the headline event from 2021 - with the Bar & Shield brand offering its first motorcycle that truly deviated from the company's cruiser lineup.

An integral part of Harley-Davidson's "Hardwire" plan to restructure the company for the future, the Pan America 1250 is a conquest bike for the American bike-maker, with an eye on scooping up some sales from rival European brands.

Was it a success? That depends on whom you ask. American publications certainly seemed to think so, with the Pan America 1250 taking top honors in several of their shootouts last year. Meanwhile, the European press was less-enthused.

We will let you decide if home-team bias, on both sides of the pond, are at play there. For our money, we'd put the Ducati Multistrada V4 S in our garage before the Harley-Davidson Pan America 1250, but reasonable minds can easily disagree on this thought.

Shootouts don't balance the account's books however, and for the bean-counters, the true measure of a motorcycle's success is on the showroom floor.

To that end, Harley-Davidson sold just over 2,500 units of its Pan America lineup in the USA last year, according to our Bothan spies.

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The Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid prototype was one of the (few) darling releases from the 2021 EICMA show in Milan, and the up-spec middleweight adventure bike brought more questions than it did answers.

Was Yamaha teasing a new higher price ADV machine for its future lineup? Was it trying to drum up business for its GYTR aftermarket parts catalog? Maybe a combination of the two? It’s hard to say.

So, it is curious that today we see that the Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid machine getting spotted in European patent documents, by our colleagues at Cycle World. And once again, that creates more questions than it does answers.

Fans of small-displacement ADV bikes will rejoice to hear that the KTM 390 Adventure is getting some updates for the 2022 model year.

Looking skin-deep, we can see that the 2022 KTM 390 Adventure get a bodywork revision for the new model year, which includes some new graphics and color choices.

However, it is the changes beyond the outer layer that are perhaps the most intriguing, as the Austrian brand has brought some key upgrades and refinements to its base ADV offering.

The Italians left the best for last on their six-part motorcycle teaser campaign for the 2022 model year, as today we finally get to see all the details about the Ducati DesertX adventure bike.

In a way, we already knew the important bits about the DesertX, having seen the concept bike at the 2019 EIMCA show.

The idea has involved since that Milan unveiling, however, with the air-cooled motor it showed with in Milan now being replaced by Ducati’s venerable water-cooled 937cc Testastretta 11° engine.

The Bimota workshop in Rimini is hard at work. The Italian brand debuted two new bikes at this year’s EICMA show, the KB4 and KB4 RC, both based off the Ninja 1000 four-cylinder platform.

However, it is the craziness that is the Bimota Tesi H2 that is putting the Italian marque back on the map, help by the machine’s supercharged 228hp wedged into hub-center steering chassis with avant-garde carbon fiber bodywork.

Now, Bimota is set to follow-up that hub-center steering madness with another “Tesi” model, this time one that’s focused on the adventure/touring segment.

In my EICMA preview article, for our A&R Pro subscribers, I wrote that the Chinese continue to impress each year with their two-wheel offerings, and that one would do well to watch what Benelli brings to the Italian trade show, as the Chinese-owned brand has a habit of bringing intriguing machines each year. I was not wrong.

There has been no shortage of middleweight adventure bikes debuting at EICMA (and before), but it is the Benelli TRK 800 that caught me the most off-guard.

Riffing on the Benelli TRK 502 that debuted in 2015, the Benelli TRK 800 is a middleweight ADV that features a 19″ front wheel, and plenty of bang for its buck.

The Yamaha Ténéré 700 has become a popular choice amongst dirt-focused ADV riders, especially those shopping in the middleweight ADV category, but the Tuning Fork brand is surely feeling the pressure as that segment continues to heat-up.

So, it is not surprise then to see Yamaha toying with a more capable, more up-spec, and more expensive variant to the Yamaha Ténéré 700 ADV machine, to help fend off the entries from other brands.

This is where the 2022 Yamaha Ténéré 700 Raid Prototype comes into play, and it just broke cover at the 2021 EICMA show in Milan, Italy.

If you want proof that the middleweight adventure category is red hot right, look no further than MV Agusta, as the Italian brand has not one, but two machines for us this EICMA show that are designed to travel whatever road the world can throw at it.

Part of the larger “Lucky Explorer Project”, this lineup of ADV machines showcase the Italian brand’s two new engine platforms: a 930cc triple, and a 550cc parallel-twin.

If the you couldn’t figure it out on your own, the MV Agusta Lucky Explorer 9.5 is the larger of the two bikes on offer, and seems set to tackle the premium end of the Western market.