Bricks might fly
For BMW, a brand synonymous with air-cooled boxer twin engines, the 1980s presented a major problem. Their venerable twins had powered them to commercial success for decades, selling the concept of a high-end ‘complete motorcycle’ to a sophisticated and wealthy clientele. This was easy in the 1960s and early 70s when the competition was often an air-cooled twin itself but, as the latter decade drew to a close, it seemed obvious that the future didn’t include a pair of sticky-out cylinders. The opposition had caught up with clever four-cylinder engines and were offering their own vision of the future. BMW’s domination of the sports-tourer niche was under threat. Bikes like Kawasaki’s GTR1000 and Honda’s Gold Wings made the Bavarian pushrod twins look and feel antiquated, so a new design was needed to power BMW into the 80s and beyond.
Wary of being seen to copy the Honda flat-four concept, the
