GERMAN GIANT
Maybe BMW was grumpy Harley-Davidson decided to build an adventure bike, or maybe the Germans finally decided they weren’t going to make new headway in the American touring market without some classic style. I really don’t know why BMW decided to build a German version of the Grand American Tourer; all I know is they did it, and did it well.
Compare the specifications to the big Harley or Indian tourers and the similarities are there: engine capacity, performance, seat height, luggage, wheelbase, weight, fuel capacity… the new Transcontinental slots right in there.
Except the Transcontinental isn’t a Grand American tourer – it’s Berlin built and something different. Very different.
STYLE AND HISTORY
The BMW R 18s are part of the company’s range of heritage machines alongside the R nineT and its variants.
The basic design of the R 18 has styling cues pointing back decades to the BMW machines of the 1950s and ‘60s, from the frame design to the tank to the exposed drive shaft and more. Although BMW wants to sell motorcycles and capture market share from the American brands with the R 18, it’s doing this by leveraging its own history rather than copying someone else’s – at least to an extent.
While BMW can claim the R 18 includes historic cues to those older machines, the company went away from those designs over time and has brought them back to suit the time and place in the market: if you want to sell touring bikes in the USA, they need to have two cylinders, a really low seat and top-loading panniers.
“…AN ALARM, CRUISE CONTROL, HEATED SEATS AND GRIPS, A HUGE DIGITAL INFO SCREEN, SMARTPHONE CONNECTIVITY…”
The result, in the form of the test bike, is stunning. The Transcontinental has a superb visual presence. It’s a giant cruiser/tourer like nothing before it, while still obviously competing with Harley-Davidson’s Ultra Limited and Indian’s Roadmaster and Pursuit. All are big, long, heavy cruiser-based touring motorcycles with twin-cylinder engines displacing close to two litres. They are all high-quality builds with price tags to match.
It’s a market BMW has never chosen to play in, but the company couldn’t have failed to see how Indian has entered the market and in not much more than a decade expanded its range of tourers and cruisers to match that of market-leader Harley-Davidson –
