Most all the negative feedback about BMW comes from actual owners of the bikes who have become feed up.

Also from dealers, who deal with BMW every day and know the dark secrets. Go to any big BMW rally and talk to owners .... then you learn about a few of these "secret" problems that officially BMW claim do not exist. This is not new, been going on for years and years and is very well documented.

BMW has a whole promotion industry based around long distance riding, a manufactured mythology of Adventure combined with the delusion of superiority. This master race allusion tends to upset some people. I just can't imagine why?

The long distance element is a keystone of their corporate culture. Go to any BMW rally, they give awards to longest distance and such. They have had BMW club publications for 40 years promoting the bike and its long distance heroics. BMW gmbh. often sponser many of these publications and clubs.

Check out the RA (BMW riders Association) or the big one, BMW MOA (BMW owners of America) both these clubs are huge and each have a slick, well produced monthly magazine. Big money mixed with a nearly super nationalist zeal for all things BMW.

The Japanese don't do much of this sort of flag waving Horse shit. Honda has a couple Gold Wing type rallies each year but that is about it. Japanese efforts go a different direction .... and purposely so. They let sales numbers and race wins do the talking.

The big four decided long ago to leave BMW alone and not go in direct competition with them. They realize the world and motorcycle industry need small companies like BMW and KTM and Husaberg to keep things interesting and foster innovation.

This is why Yamaha bailed out Ducati in the 80's and why other Italian marks have miraculously risen from the ashes with untraceable money from banks who have no money to lend but somehow came up with some to revive companies like Benelli, MV Agusta, Laverda (now gone), Moto Morini and a few others. Am I saying this is all Japanese money? No, but some of it is. A lot of it is Chinese money, like Benelli. Now owned 100% by Chinese moto company. But of course the Chinese have a different motivation, and one not nearly so benevolent. $$$$$$$

Where do you want to start? How about the Honda CB360? No one crowed about this bike or got a hard on doing big miles, but these bikes were around for decades, in the millions, quietly running on for years, without a dime spent on maintenance.

Many unsung stories beyond that here in the USA. Big country, lots of disposable income. Dozens of Jap twins have done millions of trouble free miles. But so what? Most riders don't care. They just ride it.

Gold Wings probably hold most "records" for any longevity contest you want to invent. But nobody really gives a crap about that sort of BS, only the BMW Hard-Ons care about that.

More recently regards twins? the Suzuki Vstrom's both are doing big miles and most importantly NOT having problems. Anytime you would like to compare dealer visits over a 3 or 4 year period between any BMW twin and any Vstrom, well, be my guest. Of course, you must also look at the Africa Twin and Trans Alp Hondas. Big miles, low maintenance examples of both can be found still on the road.

And Margus, you said :
"has any jap big-traile twin has done similar mileage without any breakdown or major work ..."

Would not this statement, by definition, leave BMW OUT! ?? Older BMW's need lots of maintenance and component replacement. Breakdown's? Uh, yes, indeed! At least most of the examples you see still on the road have been rebuilt and fixed many times over. So lets figure in another element here: Nostalgia. BMW guys tend to be a nostalgic lot who enjoy putting cash into an old, heavy outdated heap of crap. Fine. More power to them. But if you're looking for problems start here:

Shall we look specifically at BMW electrics?


That's funny Margus! You give us an official BMW web site reporting on a "Cross country' race in GERMANY. :confused1: I've never heard of this series. Is it run on pavement? In Germany NO off road "Cross Country" races are allowed, no? !Verboten! Is this an FIM backed series?

Also, never heard of any of the other riders, except Kriss who is a pro out Cherry Picking for BMW. A ringer.

Hey Margus, lets look at some real races now ... that have real competition.
Show me where BMW is in the results for the ISDE enduro's the last ten years and lets see how many BMW turn up in the results here. :confused1:

Now lets broaden the view a bit and check out the World Enduro series results from last 5 years or so. Now check out: World FIM Motocross series, USA AMA Super Cross, AMA GNCC series, AMA enduro series and AMA outdoor motocross series, Baja / SCORE :1000, 250, or 500.

Any BMW's shown there? (somebody did enter a twin in one of the Baja races!)
Now, should we begin with road racing? Lets compare world championships, shall we? In fact, pick any race series world wide. How many times does BMW appear?

Yes, BMW are now making a dirt race bike. And YES, it is on a fast development track and will compete. So lets wait (we've waited 40 years already) and see if they can match results from years ago in ISDE where they actually did OK ..... that was in the 50's, no?. My guess is they will need 5 years to show any sort of consistent results in a variety of legit race series world wide. This plus lots of money, the best riders and some luck.

BMW are new at this and have there own "superior" ideas about how to build a good dirt bike. Let's see how it goes, shall we? And by the way, what happened to their World Super Bike effort this year? They said they would be ready to win, but now have put it off yet again for another year???

Sorry Margus, no one takes BMW seriously. Zero credibility in any race environment. This is just the reality, not hyperbole and nothing at all against folks who like to ride the bikes.
They are beautiful bikes ... just not for everyone.

__________________
Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

If you are taking race pedigree and translating that into taking a brand seriously, I think you need to wake up. Winning races may be very impressive but it has nothing to do with day to day riding any more than race bikes have anything to do with day to day bikes. Take KTM. They make great race bikes, but their road bikes have been fraught with reliaiblity issues... Ditto for Ducati....

What do you care if a marque pitches itself as "superior"? Honda have been doing it for ages, compared to the other big jap 4....

BMW have a small portion of the market, they sell bikes and have been for decades. If they were no good, they would have gone out of business... You don't last on Marketing alone for 60 years or so: look at the MGs cars of the UK. If you make a crap product you can bluff it for a while, but not for that long. Yet they are still here making very good, everyday, real world bikes.

I would find your arguement far more plausibleif you claimed that BMs were no better than others, rather than claiming they are crap: they clearly are not.
I hope this is not because someone on a BM called you names once... feels like a vendetta!!

Whether they are any better than others is another story, but they certainly hold their own....

__________________
Adventure: it's an experience, not a style!
(so ride what you like, but ride it somewhere new!)

I'm sorry my friend, you are WAY wrong on this statement or perhaps you misunderstand?

I've talked and mostly listened to several high level Japanese mucky mucks from all four Japanese companies. I can assure you 100%, they DO learn from racing and DO use things discovered in racing to help improve and develop common street bikes.

This trickle down of technology is very real. I'm not talking about "day to day riding", like if you buy an R1 Yamaha you will now ride like Valentino. NO, I am talking about technical feed back that means years and years or solid reliability. I am talking about a bike that can take a beating, abuse, no maintenance for years and still run well .... as a street bike, not a race bike.
THIS is the part of the benefits of racing.

Of course some race bikes have little to do with the street version of that bike. The BMW Dakar bikes are a perfect example of this. These were "one off" examples, essentially. No relation to a production GS or F650. I've seen them up close in person and had a BMW team mechanic explaining the entire bike to us so I know exactly what these bikes were. (now all gone!)

But in many forms of racing, what you see are basically STOCK bikes on the race track. This is true for MOST racing in the world today.

Example: Super Stock or Production classes. These bikes ARE street bikes simply put on the track with better tires. In Moto Cross or super cross also, the race bikes are nearly identical to the bike they sell to the public.

I know, I've been there, talked to the Team boss for both Honda and Yamaha. I know exactly what is different and what is not. Mostly it is adjustment and fine tuning. The motors are all virtually STOCK!

Racing is a laboratory for the Japanese. They have a system for R$D which is quite amazing, and very few really understand it. Obviously you don't and I don't think you want to.

All true but I must tell you there is a BIG difference between the Japanese and the Italians and the Austrians too. Cultural mostly. Having hung out a lot with Japanese business men and worked for them and traveled with an official "Japan expert" just a tiny bit of understanding of their culture has rubbed off.

With the Japanese, business always comes first. So they race, but its all for business. If it does not show an advantage in business then they will not do it. The Italians, well, as you know: passion. The Italians are brilliant engineers, no question. But the things they learn in racing don't always go into their street bikes do they? We've all seen this. But you know, this is changing too! The DS1000 motor was the start of a change for Ducati. The Passion for winning MotoGP is still there but now the technical trickle down is being kept track of and engineered more and more into products they sell.

KTM I don't yet fully understand. But I feel they are making good progress.
Lets also consider they are relative "newbies" at making big twins. The Japanese have built and raced twins since the early 70's. I believe it takes time and the ability to perform and understand how to do valuable R&D based on feed back learned on the race track. The Austrians are inexperienced a bit here compared to Japanese. BMW? they have absolutely NO excuse for the poor performance of their bikes in the reliability area.

Electrics
Drive line
Fuel injection
ABS

These are things that should never, ever, for any reason ever given problems. Yet THOUSANDS of documented cases exist. WHY?

The Japanese bike makers are ALL Huge, massive companies. Most are involved in other businesses. The motorcycle division is often the smallest, least important division. Buy they all make a profit.

Honda:
1. Cars, trucks
2. Bikes, ATV's, Scooters
3. Water craft
4. Generators and other power equipment
5. Indy Car and Formula One motors

Honda own Showa suspension, several Racetracks (Suzuka in Japan) and huge testing facilities world wide (like the very secret one in the California
Mojave Desert. I'm sure I'm missing a lot here. Honda are HUGE!

Suzuki:
1. Cars (Made in Korea and China)
2. Bikes, ATV's, mini bikes
3. Race tracks/testing tracks

Kawasaki (Kawasaki Heavy Industries)
Perhaps the biggest and most powerful of all the Japanese
motorcycle companies. Google KHI and see the web site.

1. Ships
2. Helicopters, business jets
3. Bridges and massive infrastructure projects
4. Motorcycles
5. Water Craft, other power equipment

Yamaha: (what don't they make?)
1. Musical instruments
2. Boats
3. Motorcycles
4. Generators and other power equipment.

Yamaha also own Ohlins, Swedish suspension maker.
Not necessarily so!
BMW motorcycle division have run in the red (losing money) for MOST of their history. It is only in the last six or seven years they are finally making a profit and not being 100% supported by the Car division. FACT.
So, it seems your arguement does not hold up 100%.

Also, BMW spend more money on ads than any one of the big four do. They use one of the most expensive Ad agencies in the world to create their ad campaigns. They also are the only motorcycle company to "cross over" into other market areas. (that means out of the motorcycle world) BMW ads can be seen in non motorcycle publications, on TV (not race events) and Radio.
None of the Big Four do this.

I never said they were crap, I simply pointed out that industry statistics show they have a poor record for reliability. Not crap. As I've said about 5 times in this thread .... I like BMW in some ways. I just would not own one. (unless someone else pays for the service).

I like the style and design elements on many of their bikes. They ride well too and have a nice refined feel. (when new). As a journalist, I don't need to own every bike I test to know what it is about. I don't review a bike I've only ridden one day (many do). Most test bikes I get I keep for a couple weeks or sometimes months. This was the case with the 1150GS. The R12GS we only got for about 10 days. I put over 2000 miles on it and had a nice 1100GS and another 1150GS along for comparison. This is how I test bikes.

Patrick

__________________
Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

Basing on your "pseudo-theory" racing as a reliability lab: then why aren't KTM singles 100% bomb proof reliable? They've raced them for ages now.



So for example, what's Suzukis excuse to have poor reliability performance areas like:

Electrics (overall)
Fuel Injection (i.e. 3500rpm surge on Stroms)
Clutch
Poor plastics



Can you please show us the list of those thousands documented cases? (Ask from your good friends at the consumer protection company maybe? Or industry-insiders?)



Again wrong fact. Öhlins has been bought out by Europeans some time ago now (Kenth Öhlins himself owns 95%), Yamaha no longer owns residuals.


If I have time I'll dig into shares and index history of Motorrad's economy. While it holds no importance for the discussion would be interesting to check if your FACT is true or not.



Wrong about the money spend. I haven't seen any BMW motorcycle ad in TV while I've seen dozens of the Big Four ads in TV in dozens of contries.

BMW is a tiny bit compared to any of the Japanese maker. Japanese Big Four have dominated the motorcycle market for a long time, they have the most money in Ads and thus also control the mythology inside the biker community.



I see Japanese bikes ads in various mags, from car to fashion mags, while I've seen just few BMW ads in non-motorcycle issues.



Why do you lie again?



We're still waiting the details of the super-precise high quality reliable data source. It might be exacly what any HUBB newbie looks for on choosing the bike!


Buy one, which ever you like, own it at least 2 years, put more than 30K on the clock in various conditions. Then share your views as an owner.

Then we can talk. (as you say)