"impressions'? "one experience" ? I think many riders, including me, have more than "impressions" to go on. And far more than one experience to form an opinion.

The internet in now the new X factor for such things. It allows the exchange of information at a very rapid rate. BMW forums are their own worst enemy. Read them and weep my friend. ADV rider is another site where tens of thousands of BMW riders hang out. A great place to see all that goes wrong with BMW's. Not one or two my friend .... but many many examples.

Also lets not forget about industry studies and feedback compiled by organizations who specialize in looking at Motorcycle industry economic health .... that is, they keep track of how many warranty claims a specific manufacturer has to pay out and keep track of how many bikes have repeat problems, and track what systems are acting up. The OEM's use this valuable feedback to correct problems and to learn how much defects are costing them.

BMW do this as do all big OEM's. BMW now carefully guard this information since they continue to come last in reliability and are tops in warranty claims. The Japanese are not ashamed of their track record, but don't really flaunt it either. To give an overall picture, Japanese companies generally have about a 3% breakdown rate, BMW about 30%. These figures from there own data.

Groups like the MIC (motorcycle industry council) and publications like Dealer News, sometimes get credible feedback from within the industry and then can show who is doing well and who is not. This information has been available for decades. Armed with this stuff it's not hard to see the facts about reliability. In the UK, govt. consumer depts. do similar studies on the motorcycle industries.

See above! Statistics gathered about bike problems, warranty claims, Lemon Law buy backs are all public knowledge, are NOT subjective delusions! They are facts from the manufacturers themselves. And just because you don't have this in Estonia ... does not mean it does not exist. It does.

You are misinformed here my friend. KTM have plenty of faith in their bikes.
What they lacked faith in was Charley and Ewan themselves. They also thought the project would cost them a lot of money. Seems KTM felt they did not have the proper backing to actually make the trip.

Obviously, KTM misjudged things in some areas.
But in some ways you can see their point of view. Two actors, one never ridden dirt bikes, the other a novice at best.
The project was not presented to KTM in an organized way so KTM figured it could only make their bikes look bad as Ewan and Charley seemed like amateurs.

KTM worried tha when the newbie guys crashed and got hurt, KTM would look bad or be blamed. When these inexperienced guys had breakdowns because the bikes were not maintained, KTM, once again, would look bad. So to them, it was a No Win situation.

And really, anyone who thinks BMW looked good in the LONG WAY ROUND,
is not paying attention. The most telling scenes come when the boys were suffering through the mud in Mongolia. I liked the part when Claudio, the cameraman, gets on the 180cc Minsk (after the GS had broken down and then the welder fried the ECM) and starts raving about how nice and easy the bike is to ride and how wrong they were on the GS's (Of course it only lasted a week!)

But the shots of Ewan crying while trying to pick up the GS pigs in the mud tell the truth. Some inexperienced guys thought this was funny. Ha Ha.
But anyone who has been there, on an overweight, overloaded PIG can see the BMW was absolutely the wrong choice for this ride. Not to say the GS
is a bad bike, just not a dirt bike. A vstrom would have had the same problems. (except the breakdown part!)
If I were organizing that trip I would have put the boys on Tenere's , and let the frickin' support trucks carry spares, luggage and AN EXTRA BIKE!

A KTM or about any Jap dirt bike would have made the trip a better experience over all, IMO.


Patrick

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!