BMW Chasing Japanese?

[Z-06]

Linkity for Pure Sex

[Oracle of Delphi]

Very nice indeed!

[Z-06]

If they keep it at same price or lil' more than the Japanese four, they will have one customer in Orlando.

[Intrepidation]

I still like the R1 better, but it is nice.

[79VetteZ06]

I still like the R1 better, but it is nice.

R1 is all show no go. Kawasaki, Suzuki and Honda easily trounce that thing. Honda has a very good liter bike.

[A Horse With No Name]

...actually I love both Honda and BMW bikes...

Chris

[Oracle of Delphi]

I love BMW bikes too, here is the one I bought last year. It's a 2007 BMW K 1200 R!

[Northstar]

That bike looks pretty sweet. How much is it supposed to be?

[Z-06]

No mention of price. Japanese run at around $11K. Italians around $25K. I think BMW will split them if they really want the to take some of the Japanese share in the market. Collectively liter bikes have around quarter million sales annunally in US with Japanese Big 4 controlling 80-85%. If BMW wants some piece of that it should have something closer to the Japanese.

[Northstar]

Wow, $25k for a motorcycle seems rather ridiculous. I'm sure it's great fun and obviously they get great gas mileage, but they're terribly impractical, and that's coming from someone who drives a GTO (which is pretty impractical, too). I can see $11k being worth it to some, but still, it seems a bit expensive. I don't see how a motorcylce can cost more than the cheapest of cars unless it has lots of carbon fiber, expensive brakes, etc.

[79VetteZ06]

Wow, $25k for a motorcycle seems rather ridiculous. I'm sure it's great fun and obviously they get great gas mileage, but they're terribly impractical, and that's coming from someone who drives a GTO (which is pretty impractical, too). I can see $11k being worth it to some, but still, it seems a bit expensive. I don't see how a motorcylce can cost more than the cheapest of cars unless it has lots of carbon fiber, expensive brakes, etc.

It's the engine that takes bulk of the money. Those 4's pots produce close to 170hp from 1 liter engine running at 12,000 rpm. Lot of money goes into aerodynamics testing. Plus they cannot justify the volume to compete with to the moolah they put in R&D hence the price factor. Every year the Japanese 4 try to out do eachother, thus there is some serious money spent on R&D. And like you mentioned almost everything is carbon fiber, aluminum, and low weight materials.