Tag: Brown BMW

Bob’s Vintage Beemers

This blog is about my friend Bob’s vintage BMW collection on display at Brown Motor Works in Pomona, California.

Bob is one of the most interesting people I know.  He’s the founder of Brown BMW and he’s a guy with whom I’ve ridden Baja a couple of times.  He is the fastest and most talented rider I’ve ever known.  I’ve seen Bob riding well-worn BMW police trade-ins (bikes that weigh a hundred pounds more than regular boxer twins) smoke kids on Gixxers.  When he wants to make a point, Bob will outride the Ricky Racers in the twisties while standing on the pegs.

Bob’s dealership does a lot of police motorcycle work, and Bob will usually grab a black and white police motor that’s been turned in (I think he likes those bikes because they’re black and white, like the old Beemers). That’s a police motor you see in the photo of Bob at the start of this blog, and no matter how many times I’ve ridden with Bob, my heart still skips a beat when I see that black and white motorcycle in my rear view mirror. It’s a good thing when we ride in traffic…Bob takes the lead and traffic parts.

But I’m going off topic; the topic of today’s blog is the vintage Beemer collection at Brown Motor Works.

This first bike is a 1928 BMW. It’s a 500cc model, and like all of the bikes in these photos, it’s a boxer twin.

The black-and-white paint themes on the first several bikes make these photos really pop. This used to be the classic BMW colors until maybe the 1970s and it works. It’s a classic color combo.

Here’s a 1936 750cc flathead BMW.

The bike above is interesting. It’s basically the model the Chinese copied, and until recently there were still folks riding around on Chiang Jiang motorcycles in China that are, well, Chinese copies of the old 1930s BMW flathead. In the 1990s, you could go to China and buy a brand new 1936 BMW (made in China under the Chiang Jiang name). It’s the bike my good friend Carla King rode around China.  Those days are gone; you can’t register a motor vehicle more than 10 years old in China today, and they stopped making the Chinese early BMW boxer twin copies at least that long ago for emissions reasons.

This next BMW is a 1952 600cc model.

Here’s a 1951 600cc BMW.

Here’s one with a great story…it’s Bob’s personal 1961 600cc BMW.

Bob calls the bike above the original GS, and for good reason. He rode it all the way to Cabo San Lucas back in the early 1960s. You might be thinking hey, what’s the big deal?  Bob did it before there roads to Cabo. Bob rode the distance on trails and riding along the beach. Sleeping on the beach. Spinning the rear wheel in the sand to let the bike sink in so he wouldn’t have to use the center stand. That is a real adventure ride. Bob was blazing trails in Baja while I was still in elementary school!

More good vintage stuff…here’s a 1971 R75/5 750cc BMW.

Here’s a 1972 model.

Another beautiful BMW classic is the 1976 R90S model. This motorcycle turned heads when it was first introduced, and it is still a show stopper.

The bikes you see in these photos are all in their stock colors. Most amazingly, most of these bikes (including the early ones) are not restorations…they are original motorcycles.

These last two are particularly beautiful.   The first is the 1000cc 1977 R100RS.

And here’s the last bike BMW did in the R100RS configuration, the 1983 1000cc model in a beautiful pin-striped pearl white.

These photos are the results of a few minutes of shutter work on my part, and a lifetime of collecting by Bob Brown at Brown Motor Works.

The one that I found most intriguing was Bob’s early adaptation of a boxer twin into a dual sport.  As I mentioned above, Bob refers to it as the original GS.  When I was in Brown BMW ealier, I saw a current R9T 40th Anniversary model, and it pushed all the right buttons for me.  It’s a little out of my price range, but I sure spent a lot of time looking at it.  It’s one of the nicest ones they’ve ever done, I think.

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BMW’s R 18: The UberCycle

A colossal motorcycle, and I generally don’t like colossal motorcycles, but the BMW R 18 is somehow strangely appealing to me.  It’s beautiful, actually.  It’s the first one I’ve seen.  Gresh did a Dream Bike piece on this bike when BMW first released the concept.   Unlike most concept vehicles, the R 18 crossed the great divide and made it into production.   This was the first one I’ve seen.   I wouldn’t buy an R 18, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

Did I mention this thing is colossal?

I recently stayed in Alpharetta, Georgia, while on my latest secret mission.   While on the Alpharetta assignment, my digs were a fancy hotel called the Avalon.  It’s in a high end mall with outdoor shops and a setup intended to evoke feelings of an earlier time.  You know, Main Street USA, with downtown shops and apartments above the shops.  It’s a trend in new shopping malls that I like and apparently so do a lot of other people.

In the evening the Avalon mall is a place to be seen with high end driveway jewelry, and the R 18 seemed right at home parked between a Mercedes UberWagen and a Rolls Royce SUV while Ferraris, Lambos, and McClarens growled by at 10 miles per hour.  For you BMW types, not to worry:  Avalon has the requisite Starbuck’s.

I did mention this motorcycle is huge, didn’t I?  How’s a 68-inch wheelbase and a 761-pound weight sound?

The idea behind the R 18 was to create an obese cruiser evoking BMW’s earlier history.  Not too far back, mind you.  They didn’t want to put swastikas on the thing (something BMW doesn’t really mention in their history…I suppose it wouldn’t be “woke”), but the ’60s were safe and the R60 styling works.  Take a look at this R60 I photographed at Bob Brown’s So Cal BMW shop and you’ll see what I mean.

BMW is obviously positioning the R 18 against Harley and other lardass cruisers, and they more than succeeded. In fact, I’d say they out-Harleyed Harley. To me, the last Big Twin Harley that had the right look was the Evo-engine Softails.  Everything since from “The Motor Company” looks out of proportion to me.  And for the uninitiated, “The Motor Company” is how rugged individualists who dress alike, have the same belt size and tattoos, and shop at the same do-rag supplier refer to Harley-Davidson.  The implication, of course, is that there is only one company that matters manufacturing internal combustion engines.  Ah, ignorance is so bliss.  Anyway, the R 18 is kind of like the Evo Softails: It is colossal, but all the pieces seem to fit well with each other and it successfully chasm crosses to an earlier, presumably better, Horst-Wessel-free time.  I like it.

A few more styling comparisons between the old and the new…

Like Harley and the whole Made in ‘Murica shtick, BMW is capitalizing on a “Berlin Built” mantra.

Berlin Built.  Seriously?

Berlin Built.  I can’t make this stuff up, folks.

I was getting into photographing the R 18, and as I was doing so, I hoped the owner would appear so I could ask him a few questions about the motorcycle (maybe that’s sexist; for all I knew, the owner might be a woman).  That didn’t happen, but I sure had fun working my iPhone magic on this two ton Teutonic twin…

The R 18 styling works for me.   I like the old-style BMW roundels, the steelhead trout mufflers (my term, not Berlin’s), the exposed shaft drive, and more.  If it were me, I would have made the bike a bit smaller, I would have found a way to incorporate a finned version of the GS1250 engine, and maybe I would have used Earles forks rather the R 18’s telescoping front end.  But hey, I don’t sell zillions of motorcycles a year and the Boys from Bavaria do.  As UberCycles go, the R 18’s approximately $20K entry ticket doesn’t seem out of line.  It’s not my cup of kartoffelsuppe, but I think the bike is beautiful.

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