The impressive year for BMW backed up 2022, which saw 202,895 motorcycles and scooters sold – an increase of 4.4% compared to 2021. Germany remained the company’s largest single market, with 24,129 motorcycles and scooters sold there, while France also registered record sales (21,223 vehicles delivered, 6.7% up on 2022).
North America was the German company’s third largest market (an 11% increase to 20,295 units).
So last year was the best yet, commercially, in the 100-year history of the company, which continues to be the largest European manufacturer of premium motorcycles and scooters.
These are predominantly built in its main Spandau factory in Berlin, as well as in the BMW plants assembling CKD kits made there to supply local markets in Brazil and Thailand, and by its partners TVS in India, and Loncin in China.
The man who’s spearheaded this healthy growth is Markus Schramm, 60, an able and experienced motorcyclist who took over as Head of BMW Motorrad in May 2018. He’d been with its parent company BMW AG since 1991, and was already a member of both the company’s main board of directors, and its Supervisory Board.
Prior to assuming his new role, Schramm had been responsible for Corporate and Product Strategy Planning for the entire BMW Group, at a time when the company’s overall commitment to EV/Electric products was intensifying.
Having reached the retirement age for BMW executives, his five-year stint heading up BMW Motorrad is now shortly coming to an end, so the chance to speak at length with him one-on-one in his Munich office unveiled some key pointers for BMW Motorrad’s future direction, especially in its EV products.
AC: Markus, congratulations on BMW Motorrad’s record year in 2022. You’re on track to do even better in 2023, so are the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic completely behind you?
MS: Yes, I think so. It’s true that after all the restrictions of the Covid era, more and more people are getting a rider’s licence to discover the freedom of motorcycling. To be honest, I find it really astonishing how we came through this crisis with new record sales in 2021 and 22, and we are on course to add another record year in 23. So for sure we are benefitting from this in sales, while internally we created several great new structural programmes for greater flexibility in the way we do business, like refining our logistics process, our warehousing processes and suchlike. At the end of the day, the net result of the Covid crisis is that it made us much stronger for the future, while remaining in first place in the global premium motorcycle and scooter segment.
AC: But this means a lot of those customers were new ones. Who are they?
Well, in terms of the type of customers, they are not that different, it’s just there are more of them! We have the strongest brand, we believe
