This page updated May 21, 2006. Most content is from my original post eons ago.
There is new content toward bottom pertaining our F650 that just sold and the new R1200RT
we just aquired.
Many thanks to my wonderful Stepmom Dee for having saved this tidbit. This is me in Hays, Kansas
in 1969 on my first motorcycle. It was purchased for me by Dee and my Dad, and truly changed my
future.
I was 15 and it was FUN! And don't you love the Sixties? Dig the groovy highwater pants and the
fluorescent orange sox! The Hays High Hippie rides again!!
Thanks for stopping by.
zero
So, I will start with a brief overview of what my opinions are based on. I don't claim to be an expert on other brands when I make my comparisons, I KNOW I am biased. I do know a number of people who ride other brands, as I am not a BEEMER BIGOT, and so I have ridden quite a few miles along side friends on bikes other than BMWs.
I bought my first BMW, the blue R100RT seen below, in 1985. It was a new 84 model that began as an RS (which has a lower faring and handlebars) that had it's faring upper half damaged in shipping. So the dealer had turned it into an RT and, as it was then the only RT that was in the color that RS models were painted, it was a one of a kind. I bought it from what was then Greenlake Motorcycles, here in Seattle. Greenlake Motorcycles has since been Buckingham BMW, and is now Ride West BMW. You will have to check them out for yourself as they have taken over recently enough that I can't honestly judge them as a dealer yet. I will say they have a lot to live up to as my experience with BMW dealers here and, especially, on the road has been fairly positive.
When I went to buy our next bike they tried to sell me a motorcycle with an in line engine but I'm HORIZONTALLY OPPOSED to that idea. I like my BOXER better. They call them boxers because the design is an "over square" design. I'm not sure exactly what that means, except when I look at a design drawing of the engine it does appear to have a boxlike shape. (Either that or no matter what you do you will never get OVER looking SQUARE when you are riding one.) The newer K bikes were taken from a car motor. It is like most Japanese 4 cylinder motors in cars except it is laid flat (the cylinders are parallel to the ground) and points from front to rear of the vehicle instead of side to side like most car motors.
The K bike motor IS a great motor. It just doesn't have the same feel. More of a buzzy vibration instead of a rumbling vibration like the two cylinder type have. It also doesn't have it's torque (pulling power) in the same RPM areas as a boxer. To each his own, but I am glad I waited, as I wasn't the only one who felt this way. The boxers were dropped for a while and then brought back because demand was too great.
If you are wondering why I would go with BMW instead of a Japanese bike I will explain. I could do like the bikers and say "If you have to ask you wouldn't understand" or slam Japanese bikes as "scrap metal". But as I keep telling them, that just makes people think there really isn't a good reason. Yeah, Japan produced some instant rust buckets, but then AMF, some bowling ball company, tried to bury Harley-Davidson, too.
The thing is, Japan builds some truly marvelous motorcycles. They make some that run good, are dependable, and handle great. BUT, (and doesn't everyone have a big but?), if they do build a really good one it ISN'T that much cheaper. They just make more "entry level" bikes, and they ARE junk. But once you are in their showrooms.... well it isn't that much more for the really good one. Or, if you do get suckered into some cruddy thing, you will have spent so much time justifying it because the BRAND is good that you could never live it down if you switched. (artificially induced brand loyalty) Then, if they do make a good one, and it is reasonably priced, they change enough stuff on it to make it impossible to interchange parts (and they stop producing new parts for them in a few years), AND, if that isn't enough, they will flat out STOP producing the bike if it is too good! It is called planned obsolescence.
Go find new parts for a Honda Ascot 500 for example. This is an indestructible 500 cc thumper and there are tons of them still on the road, but parts come from the junkyard. This bike was produced in the last decade. It was just back in 89 or 90 that the parts companies published warnings for people to stock up on parts for their pre 60s BMWs as the factory was going to stop shipping NEW parts for them. There are still some parts places with stores of pre 60s BMW parts.
Take a look at the history of the Gold Wing. 1000 cc...climbed to 1500cc...then they have to build a new "sport tourer" 1100 cc to fill the market for touring on something besides a boat. Also the ST1100, this years lightweight tourer from Honda, is a great bike. But (BIG BUT AGAIN) so was the V engined Silver Wings they produced in the 80s. It was a little small in the motor, but that motor was (and I am sure this is why it was dropped instead of just making a larger motor) BULLETPROOF! Try getting one now and you'll find it was dumped like the Ascot. It isn't Japanese metal that is scrap, it is Japanese designs. They are scrapped not for being bad, but for when they are TOO good!
So, if you are only going to keep a bike a few years, and most do just that, why not buy Japanese? Well, that disposability lowers resale, for one thing. If you tell me how much cheaper a Japanese bike is than mine or a Harley I have to say that, first, the really good models AREN'T that much cheaper. Second, I want to keep the same bike because I don't like the "disposable" way of life. And, finally, when I do get rid of my old one, I want to both get something for it, AND be able to be happy for the person who gets it from me. (not,"WhoooHooo!!! So long sucker!") You want to ride one, fine. I won't go around saying, "Jap crap", cause I know better. But before you go around saying, "overpriced" you should check into the whole story. While you are checking, go to a motorcycle show and see all the really OLD Beemers and Harleys and (hee hee) Hondas.
Guess what GS means. I dunno either! Could be something German. Could be Gold Standard. Who knows? It is the model designation for BMWs dual purpose bikes. They are strange, to say the least, but they are also well balanced, high ground clearance, high torque, back road machine! But as I only hit real dirt occasionally, we did some customizing on ours. First of all I couldn't stand the paint job. Too dirt bike for me. Then I couldn't see long distance touring with no windshield. (Anyone here REALLY like the taste of bugs?) So when we got this one we had some changes made. Handlebar mounted faring, yellow removed, clasic BMW white pinstripes added, and as soon as the first set of nobby tires were burned off we put on street tires. The picture above is the before, this is the actual bike we purchased. The picture below is what it looks like after our changes.
While my experience with BMW dealers has been good, and my experience with the motorcycles has been GREAT, my brand loyalty is far from artificially induced. In fact, MY brand loyalty is to the bikes not the company. I am loyal to Beemers in SPITE of BMW, not to BMW. The BMW company has been a different story. Though I will admit that BMWNA (BMW North America, the US-Canada branch of BMW) has made real strides in improving customer relations recently, I have had the opinion that, (and this is a quote from ME) "They build great bikes...but the company is run by left over NAZIS." Now I mean nothing about German people, I simply mean their attitude has been, "Ve know vhat iz bezt vor you and you vill shut up und rrride it!" Very unresponsive to customer needs and suggestions. Not just mine, but things that have been repeatedly sought by dealers and writers and riding groups. But as I said, this has improved over the years.
As an example of what I mean I will describe the only major service problem I have had with our bikes. On the RT, the valves burnt up (exhaust) after only 20,000 miles. While it was out of warranty by a couple of months, my opinion (AND my dealers opinion) was that it was a defect. A design flaw. And therefore they should pay all, or at least some, of the cost. Their explanation was it was due to the poor quality of gasoline in America and there was nothing that they could have done about it. Well... maybe, BUT, it turns out, they redesigned the valve angle and the composition of the metal in the valve in the model year after mine was produced. Sounds like there WAS something they could've done to me!
However, after 33,000 or so miles on the GS (and several years out of warrantee) the engine had a major melt down. Parts of the main bearings came apart and the resulting shardes of metal ATE most of the engine. A complete rebuild was required. BMW said that it had to be defective to come apart, and picked up half the tab. And this was a couple of years out of warrantee.
So, while BMW isn't immune to trouble, I have never been stranded by one in over 100,000 miles of riding. And the company has become more responsive over the years.
The third engine type of the modern BMW line is the F type. This is a "thumper". A single cylinder engine with water cooling and chain drive. This was originally a "Euro" bike built with players such as Rotax (engine) and Aprilia (electrics and assembly). It is an incredible machine for what it is. And it was the third of our BMWs.
We purchased the next bike with Rita in mind. Looking for something closer to a beginners bike. The F650 fit the bill, and did it without a bunch of compromises. It is plenty big for one up touring, horribly dependable, and was reasonably priced. Plus when we got it was zero down and zero percent interest. Seemed destined.
One area we did have to address was the BMW bane of tall seat height. We resolved that with a custom seat from Rich's. If you don't know about this company, check them out if considering a custom. Top quality and really custom work. They even put in a notch for Rita's long tailbone.
Rita took the MSF course, got her license, and soon we were off on a trip to Minnesota. Her on the F650, me on the GS. The biggest draw back to a smaller bike, in my opinion is how they take the wind. Rita was much more susceptible to being knocked around on the F650. I didn't realize how much so until years later when we rented an F650 in New Zealand and I was at the helm on the road. I had ridden some miles on hers leading up to the trip, but not out on a long trip.
We had no problems with this bike during the time we owned it. Later, after we took the GS to the East coast and left it with Rita's brother, I got a stock seat and a tall windshield and used it for commuting quite a bit. Not my bike. Not bad, just not my bike.
It was so quick I found myself riding a bit too aggressively. In my hands it really seemed to want to zip around at a higher rate of speed than I like to keep up in a city. I am talking about how one rides in traffic. This bike was so quick and had such a confident feel about it that I tended to start pulling those "statistic waiting to happen" maneuvers to get where I was going.
I feel much safer in town when I ride more in keeping with car traffic and blend in. Not that I can't see the appeal of those quick darts into a vanishing gap in traffic. I just have witnessed too many times the failure of one of those leading someone to become a highway statistic. Fifteen years driving a bus in Seattle left me witness to far too many accidents where some motorcyclist trying to save a little time ended up as one more example for others to point at and say, "Motorcycles are unsafe!"
For me, I like a heavier bike. I want quick response, but I also want some feeling of mass to the vehicle. I want to feel something solid under me. That was the thing I loved about my first BMW. The 84RT was solid as a rock. Perfect balance, and fast, but not too quick. You had to thump the bars pretty good. You didn't "flick" it. You could make it do a lot, but it didn't beg the aggressive maneuver the way a really light and quick bike will.
I almost got a new RT just before moving the GS to the East coast. But the deal wasn't quite right, and to be honest, the RT wasn't quite what I dreamed of at that time. So instead we decided to keep the GS a while longer.
Then the new boxer motor came out. The R1200 or "hex head" version of the "oil head". I am really impressed with the motor. And then they announced the RT implementation of the R1200. It finally had all the pluses I dreamed of in one bike. The R model RT never had the cruise control. I have had carpal tunnel surgery, but still need to take the load off my right wrist some times, and the throttle lock won't keep the speed even enough, long enough. And while the bags were the biggest for BMW, the top box wasn't ever "full size" for a touring bike. Had I bought the older RT, I would have gone with the really nice large Givi for a top bag.
But, this time they answered all my desires and even threw in one I didn't know I had. Electronic Suspension Adjustment, "ESA"! While the staff at the dealer debated whether this option was worth it, I had no doubt. As someone who rode around on a stiffer than comfortable suspension most of the time, due to wanting to be able to "work the curves" I was thrilled. Now I know I COULD pull over at the onset of twisties and change it manually, then change it back after going through the pass or canyon, in fact I never would. Now, push a button and go from "comfort" to "normal" to "sport". SWEEET!
SO, our 4th BMW is a new R1200RT in Dark Graphite Metallic paint with Silver lowers, a LARGE top box, a hugely well designed (one hand attach/detach) tankbag, and of course, I will still need the aftermarket windshield. The one "why not" left for me to direct at BMW Motorrad... Why not offer multiple choice on that as well as seat height and top box size? Oh well, from what I've experienced and seen, the aftermarket usually comes up with several interesting alternatives.
I guess that means I could be happier, but not much. The grin will take a while to wear off!
