Stu was on the phone during lunch with his parents back home in Florida. He hung up and explained the situation. His family had been evacuated as Frances was on it's way through. To make things worse a new hurricane, Ivan, was a week away from Cuba and headed towards Florida. That's three major hurricances in six weeks.
"Stu... Is it the end of the world and we just don't know it?"
He smiled, "Well, we're riding BMW's in Germany on the Nurburgring and loving it. It must be!"
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So, BMW picked me (along with 29 others from around the world) to ride their new K1200S on the Nurburgring in Germany. I’d never ridden a BMW before. The first time I saw one, when I was about 8 years old, I thought it was the most awesome motorcycle ever made.
When I began riding street bikes seven years later I began to see them differently. The K75S looked good, but from all accounts I heard it didn’t perform very well at all. As for the other BMWs, well they didn’t look good so I didn’t care.
Of course I’m expected to write great things about the K1200S. The really cool thing is that the K1200S truly is a great bike so I have no problems with anybody thinking that BMW bought my opinion with a simple trip to the Nurburgring.
A little about me
I started riding motorcycles when I was five years old. In 1998, I did a one month, 14,300 mile trip around the US and through parts of Canada with Stuart Vernon. In 1999, my first year of racing, I won an amateur championship. Near the end of 1999, I started instructing with Keith Code’s California Superbike School. I’ve since raced in a few Endurance races and now produce on-board videos of the various race tracks and roads of the southeast.
I’ve never ridden a BMW before and have always thought of them as quirky looking but very functional motorcycles that were, in the most part, heavy and underpowered.
That perception has changed.
The quick overview
The bikes we rode were pre-production bikes and they did have their problems – vibration and lousy throttle response at 3500-4000 rpm, various shifting problem, and a grossly inaccurate fuel gauge. These were all mentioned if various magazines but they are really minor problems.
What about a high speed weave you ask? I had the bike up to an indicated 270kph and it did nothing but go right where I pointed it. And believe me you’d notice if the bike did anything other than go where you pointed it when doing 270kph through the various sweeping turns of the Kesselchen section. If it does have a high speed weave it’s somewhere in the 270-290kph range – so what.
Overweight? They way it flicks from footpeg to footpeg, you’d never know it weighs 550lbs with a full tank of gas. I’d say it flicks like 2000 ZX-9R or a first generation GSX-R1000.
Sunday
Getting the bikes
At 4pm thirty anxious riders in full riding gear clambered their way onto a bus and headed out to a super secret holding location where the new K1200S’ we were to ride were being held.
The bikes were blue and white or black and yellow and they were lined up in alternating order. Seeing that many new bikes together is always a pretty sight. Unfortunately my digital camera is one of the bigger kinds so I didn’t have it with me to take any pictures with.
Once we got out of the bus we were introduced to five instructors and each one was given a label. Two were “Very Fast”, two were “Fast”, and one was “Normal.” Naturally, Stuart and I went to one of the “Very Fast” groups. The instructor quickly introduced himself, had us to a brief introduction of ourselves and then told us our bike numbers. It was time to ride.
ABS = two thumbs up!
Spend twenty-one hours traveling, flying through the night getting almost no sleep, and then go ride a 167hp motorcycle in a self proclaimed “very fast” group on bone jarringly bumpy, twisty two-way roads just barely one and a half lanes wide and you might just find ABS to be very useful.
My first ride on a pre-production model of the new BMW K1200S was a three hour ride through the quaint villages which the famous Nurburgring winds its way through and around. The roads ranged from normal sized roads with gentle sweeping turns to narrow, twisty, and BUMPY roads. At one point I thought the narrow roads were one way – a point which was quickly proved wrong by a small car which took up almost the whole road.
I was riding fourth in the group with Stuart behind me. We had just gone around a first gear 3000 rpm hairpin turn on one of those narrow, twisty roads, when the front three passed the car in front of us. There was another car coming down the hill and I had space, so I made the pass too. What I didn’t see was that there was road work going on and the other three were slowing down very quickly due to the dirt, gravel and big bumps.
Actually, it wasn’t road work. It was simply red and white striped signs demarking the worst part of erosion where the road had slid away.
I saw this and had a two foot wide path to avoid the on coming car and miss the hole in the road caused by the missing pavement. Oh, I was in 2nd gear doing about 70mph and had to get slowed down real quick to not run into the other three riders.
Thankfully I was riding the K1200S.
I squeezed on the brakes quite hard and then hit the bumps and gravel. The ABS released the brakes and it felt like I was free wheeling straight into the other three – THAT made me a little nervous. In actuality though, the bike was still slowing down quite quickly.
The ABS did its job and got me slowed down to 20mph and I did not run into the other riders. In fact no one else was any the wiser to all the drama that had just happened. Had I been on a non-ABS equipped bike it would have been... different.
That was when I began to like the bike.
ESA – Electronic Suspension Adjustment
Some of the bikes we rode were equipped with a way cool feature, Electronic Suspension Adjustment – thankfully mine was one of them. You could change the dampening rates while riding and the preload rates when stopped.
The dampening rates were called Sport, Normal, and Comfort. The preload rates were Solo, Solo + Luggage, Passenger, and Passenger + Luggage. Though I could never remember to change the preload settings, the preload settings made big differences in the bike.
Several minutes after the above ABS incident, I was playing with the suspension dampening settings and changed the settings to Comfort while on a relatively fast and bumpy road. Comfort is supposed to have the least amount of dampening which would allow the suspension to move faster and further.
At first I didn’t notice any change, then two seconds later the bike was completely different. It was an under-damped, pogo-ing, chassis pitching beast that I was barely able to ride at the 80mph(130kph) we were going down that bumpy, narrow, twisty farm road. However, when we arrived at the next village and slowed down to 30mph(50kph) that Comfort setting was wonderful and the suspension easily absorbed all the pavement irregularities thrown at it.
Comfort is probably the setting I’d use when commuting to and from work on interstates and city streets. I don’t know that I’d ever use Normal and Sport is where it stayed for the remainder of my test ride.
The suspension is truly phenomenal. With the dampening set to sport the bike simply handles anything you can throw at it – even with my 220lbs(100kg) on board. The suspension moves, and you feel it but, unlike most other bikes I’ve ridden, there is very little fore/aft motion. The wheels simply move up and down with very little change in the attitude of the bike. This trait is especially apparent when cornering on bumpy roads. The bike simply tracks over the bumps and does not at anytime change its direction unless you tell it to.
This level of suspension quality usually costs me thousands of dollars after I buy a motorcycle. The suspension is the first thing I change on my bikes to handle my weight and high speed riding. I wouldn’t have to change this bike. I find that amazing.
I also find it amazing that riders weighing easily 60lbs(27kg) less than me were also excited by how great the suspension was.
Different Feeling
As the three hour ride progressed I began to notice the lack of front end dive under braking. This made for an odd feeling from the front of the bike.
I usually manage front end dive with cornering forces and release the brakes in unison with the turning in of the bike. On the K1200S, the transition from on brakes to off brakes did nothing to upset the chassis of the bike.
At first the front felt vague and I would turn the bike in slowly. Then I decided to just start flicking the bike like I normally do and trust that I could handle any problems that arose.
What I found was that I could actually start to feel what the front was doing instead of feeling what the suspension was doing as with telescopic forks. This new found feeling of the front became very apparent two days later.
Anyway, the ride on Sunday ended all too soon. My first ride on a BMW was an outstanding success for BMW and an eye opening experience. I couldn’t wait to get this bike on the Nurburgring.
Nurburgring
What’s the solution for jet lag? Why more jetting of course! And the K1200S on Nurburgring was up to the task of waking me up!
Finally we were on the famous Nurburgring. For our first lap we rode a rather slow speed almost to the starting area and then we did something which really woke me up – we went counter race direction!
We road back through a series of turns, staying on the far right of the track and riding on the curbs when possible then we pulled off on to the grass and stopped.
Our instructor, Sep, explained to us that this was not a normal race track. There are no corner workers at Nurburgring. If someone crashed it would be our responsibility to help them. He then demonstrated several safety measures to take and what to do with the rider, the bike, the helmet, and how to warn others of the accident.
That’s why the Nurburgring is so dangerous. It is 13 miles from start to finish with almost no run off room, no corner workers, and only three entry points of entry. If you crash there not only are probably going to hit an Armco wall it will also be a while before real medical attention gets to you.
After we had practiced those safety measures Sep started talking to us about the turn we were at, Schwalbenschwanz. He talked to us a bout the line through the turn, pointed out some reference points and then took us out as a group and lead us through it several times. Each time through the person behind him would go to the end of the group and we’d turn around, go counter race, and then go through the turn again until everyone had had a chance to follow him.
At an obviously pre-determined time we headed back to the starting area and the day really began.
Occasionally we would stop and talk about a corner, reference points, camber, and lines. Mostly we rode.
Wheelies
Since we were understandably going slower than I wanted to for most of Monday morning, I made things a little more interesting.
I like to wheelie motorcycles. I’m not one of those riders that can wheelie forever but I can get a bike to wheelie just about anytime I want to. The K1200S is hard to wheelie. Its long wheelbase and engine management work against it. But, with proper timing, I was able to get some good 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gear wheelies at different places throughout the track. Besides, it keeps the video interesting too.
Later on, when the speed picked up, I kept doing wheelies simply because I had the timing down and it looks cool on video. The other riders commented on this several times quite jealously because they were having great difficulty emulating me.
That is my major complaint about the bike. It’s hard to wheelie. Hey, BMW, give me a button to turn off or change the engine management like I can turn off Traction Control in a BMW car.
Handling
The application of technology in this bike is really amazing and no where is that technology more apparent in the riding than corner entry.
With a telescopic fork suspension the rider has to spend a lot of attention when releasing the brakes while turning the bike in. Doing it wrong upsets the whole bike.
With the K1200S it almost doesn’t matter how fast you release the brakes because there is almost no dive.
Many would think that because the front end is not compressed the bike would be slower to turn in. That simply isn’t the case. I can assure you the bike goes from footpeg to footpeg much easier than a bike of its size has a right to.
Feedback
On the first day riders complained of lack of feedback from the front or other general uncertainties. Personally I think it was just because we were all on a new bike. I too felt disconnected from the front but I was just crazy enough to say the hell with it and flick the bike into a corner anyway. Schlagen Sie das Motorrad rüber!
It didn’t take long for me to find the limit.
Exiting Brunnchen we started passing a slower group. They had pulled over to the right to give us room but we didn’t start passing until we entered Eisgarten, an off-camber, decreasing radius left then right at the top of the hill that leads to Pflantzgarten. As I was next to last in the group I was able to get some good speed going for the turn. I stayed to the left of the track to give a safe distance to the slower group and I flicked the bike in. Then I realized my mistake.
I had turned in too early.
I had my knee down and I was dragging the footpeg with turn getting tighter. As I drifted wider, at the mercy of physics, I left the main line and discovered that about one meter away from the curbing there were small ripple bumps. Those ripples caused the front to start sliding a little.
That was about the time I started to get a little worried. If I had crashed there I probably would have crashed two or three others with me.
I got on the gas and picked the bike up for the right at the top of the hill. That put me on a trajectory to cross about 2 meters in front of the lead rider of the slower group. Time to start thinking about the next turn.
All through Eisgarten, I knew exactly what was going on with the front. I knew when it started sliding and I knew why. If that’s not feedback, I don’t know what is.
The Three Basics
There are three basic things I want a motorcycle to do:
1. Turn predictably
2. Brake well
3. Accelerate well
There are some people who don’t care if their motorcycle does any of those three but I have to have them. The K1200S does all three extremely well. I feel that anyone who complains about the K1200S is really saying the bike is different than anything else they’ve ridden.
Turn predictably
The bike leans from side to side in a very linear fashion. It never feels like it’s falling into a turn or like it’s getting harder to turn in.
Brake well
The servo assisted ABS brakes take a little getting used to because of their power and sensitivity. I was just getting used to them by the time we stopped riding on Tuesday.
Being able to easily slow down from 6th to 2nd gear at Steilstrecke using only one finger on the brakes really displayed the power and usefulness of the brakes and the servos. Again, the feel is much different than a normal motorcycle but the feel is there.
Also, with the ABS you don’t really care so much if you lock up the front wheel. That’s a wonderful thing.
Accelerate well
This bike simply accelerates very well. Its long wheelbase helps it launch without wheelies from a standing start and, when rolling, the torque just propels the bike forward with great ease.
The Extras
The extras are the things you need for the street – even thinks you don’t think you need.
Wind protection
The wind screen looks a little gimmicky at first but after you ride the bike you realize someone put a lot of work into designing that thing. It works great.
Mirrors
These mirrors are the best I’ve seen on a bike with this performance. They’re even better than the mirrors on BMW’s new K1200LT.
Comfort
The bike is very comfortable. The seat to footpeg distance is good, the seat has just the right firmness, and the bike is narrow at the tank allowing for easy movement side to side and
Adding to that comfort is the inclusion of heated grips. Those will make commuting in the colder months a little more enjoyable.
The gauges
The layout of the gauges is very nice. Having a gear indicator is cool and is a great help in getting the bike in neutral. The fuel gauge is easy to read as is the temperature gauge. With two tripmeters and a Distance To Empty display, the gauges are very functional indeed.
Conclusion
Well, if you haven’t guessed by now, I think the K1200S is a great bike. It’s not a race bike it’s a street bike. As a street bike, it’s top notch if not the best.
As it was, in pre-production form, the bike was close to being the perfect sport street bike. Its flickablity, stability, power, torque, speed, comfort (for the rider at least,) and brakes were all top notch. The usable mirrors, heated grips, key security system, well designed tankbag and luggage all work to make this bike a top candidate for anyone looking for a HIGH performance street bike capable of commuting daily, running through twisty mountain roads, or riding for thousands of miles on end.
Compared to my Yamaha FZ-1(Fazer 1000) the K1200S EASILY out performs the FZ in ALL street bike related categories (comfort, sport performance, touring, wind protection, etc…) except weight. The K1200S is a little heavier by the numbers but feels much lighter than the FZ.
Is it a Hayabusa, ZX-12, or Blackbird beater? In top speed, no. I’ll bet it would beat them them on a twisty road though, especially if it was bumpy.
The K1200S sets a new course for BMW. BMWs are no longer heavy, quirky, underpowered bikes. I’ll have to check into buying one.