BMW Racing Motorcycles: The Mastery of Speed
Posted on | March 11, 2010 | 3 Comments
Product Description
Here is the intriguing story of one of the world’s most admired and enduring motorcycle companies, and how their fortunes were molded by a determination to win races. Early in the last century, the fledgling company decided to test its products, demonstrate the quality of its designs, and showcase German technology by winning competitions. That determination has lasted to this day, as BMW has remained a formidable competitor in various venues of motorcycle racing. T… More >>
BMW Racing Motorcycles: The Mastery of Speed
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3 Responses to “BMW Racing Motorcycles: The Mastery of Speed”
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March 12th, 2010 @ 12:23 am
This book is really good history of BMW’s racing teams especially in the 1940s-1960s. There are lots of interesting black and white pictures of old racers and their bikes. Good book, I enjoyed it……
Rating: 5 / 5
March 12th, 2010 @ 12:24 am
This definitely belongs in every BMW fan’s book collection. Even if you are not a big racing fan you will enjoy the historical facts and the great pictures.
Rating: 5 / 5
March 12th, 2010 @ 12:31 am
No manufacturer has a longer racing record than BMW, with factory involvement not just in motorcycles of many sizes and classes but also in the arcane (some say the most exciting) sidecar race category. BMW started winning German national championships in 1924 and took the sidecar world championship for 20 consecutive years–1954-1974. Their bikes also did brilliantly in the Isle of Man in the hands of greats such as Walter Zeller, Georg Meier and the Helmut Dahne, holder of the Nurburging motorcycle lap record (7’49.71″)on an RC-30. BMW is still racing, in 2008.
This excellent book starts with the company crashing to earth in 1919 after WWI, forbidden to continue making aero engines and denied its technological roots by the Treaty of Versailles. It proceeds through Europe’s great road and off-road races to the era of the `kompressor’ (supercharger), to the Munich factory’s devastation by Allied bombing in WWII, shown in photos.
Allen and Gardiner have created what is probably the most complete, definitive collection of data and photographs of BMW’s racing endeavors, and done it with style and wit. Beautifully produced, in `horizontal’ format, the book includes many great historical photos of the men and machines that have made the marque among the most respected in all of motorcycle racing. There is, however, only one diagram–a frontal drawing of the original R.32, BMW’s epochal boxer twin of 1923–where the technically inclined reader thirsts for more.
The Butler & Smith era in the U.S. is described in detail, including Udo Gietl’s frame achievements that delivered Superbike success, extends to the off-road (e.g. Paris-Dakar) wins, even ’07 Pike’s Peak, with Gary Trachey on a `Megamoto,’ and to the emerging era of the current HP2. Noted (without photo) is the 1997-1999 achievement of Dave Morris, three-time Singles winner in the Isle of Man on BMWs. No mention–a pity!–is made nor photo shown of BMW’s rumored MotoGP bikes, seen in magazines in 2006 with Luca Cadalora in the saddle, nor of the evolutionary camshaft and valve work on the four-valve boxer oilhead engine (like its predecessors, notoriously wide and restrictive of lean angle, irrelevant in their brilliantly successful racing sidecars).
This book arrives at a time when BMW is finally, after too long a hiatus, returning to serious national racing in the U.S. with its new HP2, already racing in MotoST and world endurance events in the hands of Brian Parriott and Nate Kern. Soon we will see its even newer World Superbike sibling, the transverse-four S 1000RR, reportedly due in the SBK series in 2009.
For about 25 years, since Reg Pridmore won the U.S. Superbike Championship in 1976, BMW produced a series of increasingly detuned and boring `air-head’ bikes that disappointed hard-core race and sport-bike enthusiasts. The shaft-drive K bikes were little better, despite half-hearted attempts via the bloated K-1 and too-late/too-heavy current K offerings. The book, dealing only with racing, tactfully avoids mentioning these machines. Only with the oil-head R1100S in 2000, a machine that evolved into the HP2, did BMW inch back slowly to its racing roots. Can they keep up the commitment, financially, technically, and by attracting great riders? Time will tell.
Rating: 4 / 5