{"id":13254,"date":"2021-05-29T13:02:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-29T20:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=13254"},"modified":"2021-05-29T17:17:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T00:17:56","slug":"bmws-r-18-the-ubercycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/29\/bmws-r-18-the-ubercycle\/","title":{"rendered":"BMW’s R 18: The UberCycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A colossal motorcycle, and I generally don’t like colossal motorcycles, but the BMW R 18 is somehow strangely appealing to me.\u00a0 It’s beautiful, actually.\u00a0 It’s the first one I’ve seen.\u00a0 Gresh did a Dream Bike piece<\/a> on this bike when BMW first released the concept.\u00a0 \u00a0Unlike most concept vehicles, the R 18 crossed the great divide and made it into production.\u00a0 \u00a0This was the first one I’ve seen.\u00a0 \u00a0I wouldn’t buy an R 18, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.<\/p>\n

Did I mention this thing is colossal?<\/p>\n

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I recently stayed in Alpharetta, Georgia, while on my latest secret mission.\u00a0 \u00a0While on the Alpharetta assignment, my digs were a fancy hotel called the Avalon.\u00a0 It’s in a high end mall with outdoor shops and a setup intended to evoke feelings of an earlier time.\u00a0 You know, Main Street USA, with downtown shops and apartments above the shops.\u00a0 It’s a trend in new shopping malls that I like and apparently so do a lot of other people.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 For you BMW types, not to worry:\u00a0 Avalon has the requisite Starbuck’s.<\/p>\n

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I did mention this motorcycle is huge, didn’t I?\u00a0 How’s a 68-inch wheelbase and a 761-pound weight sound?<\/p>\n

The idea behind the R 18 was to create an obese cruiser evoking BMW’s earlier history.\u00a0 Not too far back, mind you.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Take a look at this R60 I photographed at Bob Brown’s So Cal BMW shop and you’ll see what I mean.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 Everything since from “The Motor Company” looks out of proportion to me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The implication, of course, is that there is only one company that matters manufacturing internal combustion engines.\u00a0 Ah, ignorance is so bliss.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I like it.<\/p>\n

A few more styling comparisons between the old and the new…<\/p>\n

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Like Harley and the whole Made in ‘Murica shtick, BMW is capitalizing on a “Berlin Built” mantra.<\/p>\n

Berlin Built.\u00a0 Seriously?<\/p>\n

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Berlin Built.\u00a0 I can’t make this stuff up, folks.<\/p>\n

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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).\u00a0 That didn’t happen, but I sure had fun working my iPhone magic on this two ton Teutonic twin…<\/p>\n

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The R 18 styling works for me.\u00a0 \u00a0I like the old-style BMW roundels, the steelhead trout mufflers (my term, not Berlin’s), the exposed shaft drive, and more.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But hey, I don’t sell zillions of motorcycles a year and the Boys from Bavaria do.\u00a0 As UberCycles go, the R 18’s approximately $20K entry ticket doesn’t seem out of line.\u00a0 It’s not my cup of kartoffelsuppe, but I think the bike is beautiful.<\/p>\n

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Never miss an ExNotes blog!\u00a0 Sign up here for free!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A colossal motorcycle, and I generally don’t like colossal motorcycles, but the BMW R 18 is somehow strangely appealing to me.\u00a0 It’s beautiful, actually.\u00a0 It’s the first one I’ve seen.\u00a0 Gresh did a Dream Bike piece on this bike when BMW first released the concept.\u00a0 \u00a0Unlike most concept vehicles, the R 18 crossed the great … Continue reading “BMW’s R 18: The UberCycle”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[392,352,140],"tags":[2067,2068,2066],"class_list":["post-13254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-back-in-the-day","category-bmw","category-vintage-motorcycle","tag-bmw-r-18","tag-bmw-styling","tag-brown-bmw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/IMG_0141-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13254"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13298,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13254\/revisions\/13298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}