So I posted that email from Captain Desiderio yesterday and my good buddy Jersey John (who like most mature Jersey boys left the state for warmer climes) commented on Facebook about his love of vintage BMWs. Johnny’s Dad had an R60 back in the ’60s, and that got me to thinking about those magnificent old Beemer Boxers. After posting the Ecuadorean vintage police motors extravaganza yesterday I hung out with the Brown BMW geezers for lunch, and while I was there, I snapped a couple of photos of Bob’s vintage BMWs on the showroom floor. With advance apologies for the lousy iPhone photo quality, here you go…
I’ve always thought it would be cool to ride one of those early Earles-forked BMWs. When I lived through the ’60s, I thought the bikes were cool in an odd sort of way…lots of displacement but low power compared the BSA and Triumph 650s of the day, a weird kick starter that rotated outward from the bike, the low profile, and of course, the horizontally-opposed twin configuration. For a kid lusting after vertical twins from England and Honda Super Hawks, the BMW was most definitely an odd duck, but they were still cool. You didn’t see them very often, but when you did, the bikes commanded respect. They had what I later learned to call command presence. It’s hard to define, but it was definitely there.
When I was 12, I traveled overseas with my Dad through Lucerne, Switzerland, and I have a vivid memory of a Swiss motor officer at a stoplight in Lucerne on a white BMW. I’d never seen such a thing (I thought all BMWs were black), and the bike made a lasting impression. It was almost like looking at a photo negative…all the colors were reversed. Instead of being black with white pinstripes, the Lucerne boxer was white with black pinstripes. It was beautiful. I’m guessing BMW manufactured a lot more black motorcycles than white ones back then, but I’ve seen a few of the white ones since. A quick YouTube search turned up some interesting videos, too..
Cool stuff, to be sure. I saw a fully-restored white R69S similar to the ones you see above in the Cycle Trader magazine about 10 years ago. The guy wanted $18,000 for it, and that was way too rich for me. The value is there, though, and these old vintage Beemers sure are beautiful.
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