Issue:
March/April 2007

Text:
Robert Smith

Photography:
Robert Smith

Pages:
102 - 104

Visit the gallery for more pictures

I once asked a BMW car marketing guy what differentiated his company's image from rival Mercedes. "Simple," he said. "We build motorcycles; they build trucks."

And considering its traditional image as a maker of staid and stolid motorcycles, BMW has an impressive record of performance innovation: the first factory-faired sport bike, the 1976 Daytona-winning R90S, for example; more recently, the astounding K1200R, the world's fastest street standard; and the bike that created the adventure touring category, the R80G/S of 1981.

Often emulated, never quite rivaled, BMW's GS series remains the benchmark for "big trailies": the bikes that the GS range has inspired since 1980, including the Cagiva Elefant, Triumph Tiger, Moto Guzzi Quota, Aprilia Caponord, KTM Adventure, Suzuki V-Strom, and (outside the US) Honda's trio of twin-cylinder trailies, the Transalp, Africa Twin, and Varadero.

ISDT and Paris-Dakar
In the late 1960s, BMW almost quit making bikes. They needed capacity to build more cars, the motorcycle market was in a downturn, and the aging R60 and R69 were essentially obsolete. But motorcycles are about performance, a trait BMW wanted buyers to associate with its cars; so instead it lured Hans-Gunther von der Marwitz from Porsche to re-invent its motorcycle range. Thus the "slash" series of BMW boxers was born, the /5, /6 and /7s, built in a new factory in Spandau, just outside Berlin. Von der Marwitz's basic design was so good, it ran until the last "airhead" twins of 1996....