Friday, May 24, 2013

A blast from my motoring past


As I've mentioned before, back in South Africa I owned and thoroughly enjoyed a BMW R100RT motorcycle.  This gem gave me many thousands of miles of motoring pleasure, until the danger from other motorists in the large city where I was living at the time convinced me that it was better to give up the bike and remain alive!  I understand things haven't improved since then . . .

Be that as it may, BMW first introduced a flat-twin, horizontally-opposed so-called 'Boxer engine' in its R32 motorcycle in 1923.  The same engine, with a few modifications, continues to power some of BMW's motorcycles to this day.  Recently the company decided to celebrate 90 years of the Boxer engine by producing a custom bike.

This is the result.  I recommend watching in full-screen mode.





You can read all about it here.  Suffice it to say that, despite my fused spine and nerve damage in my left leg, I'd give my eye-teeth to own and ride one of them!  Drool-worthy . . .

Peter

4 comments:

Stuart Garfath, Sydney Australia. said...

Great day in the morning!!. To me, this is like re-designing the Saturn 5 launch vehicle and coming up with the Enterprise!.
WOW!!!.
VERY smart use (continuation?) of that magnificient BMW paint scheme, brilliant tie-in to the ancestry of the Marque.
As for the end result, at risk of repeating myself....
WOW!!!.
Now, if I can persuade "She who must be obeyed",- maybe in my next life, but, hey!, a bloke can wish, can't he!.
'Till then, I'll happily stay with my Moto Guzzi V7 Classic, after 41 years of riding, and surviving motorcycles, for me, She's a very very sweet machine.

Old NFO said...

OH WOW... I agree, that would be an absolute blast to ride!

Bryn said...

As Stuart says, superb continuation of the BMW heritage with the R90 paint scheme.
Layout is pure BMW (shades of R100CS), but the engine looks a little higher in the frame in this new bike? Exquisite anyway, just several years too late for a creaky & unfit olde farte like me. I've just switched to a 27 year old BMW K100RT from a 14 year old Suzuki RF900R because my spine could not tolerate more than 140 miles in one session thanks to the ergonomics, whereas I can ride the K100RT easily 200 miles, refuel, then set off again.

Lin said...

Ohhh noooo, I think Google just swallowed my comment!

Late to this dance, my apologies. I was listlessly cruising the Net tonight after losing a gentleman friend on Monday. I was forever a Norton fanatic and he was a Triumph fanatic so your post on the Triumph triple hearse really struck close to home. He would have loved it.

This story reminded me of 1976 when an engineer friend on a classic smoke grey R90S and I on a Dunstall Norton 810 Commando set off on a 10,000 mile ride across the US and Canada. It was long before clogged aortas and failed kick-start hips, it was the best of times. God rest you ever so peacefully, Sidecar Kenn.