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

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!