Cafe Racer Bikes

Late last year, while the moto press was busy wetting its pants over the forthcoming R 1300 GS, the folks at Bayerische Motoren Werke quietly mentioned that they planned to change the name of the R nineT. That made sense, the R nineT had originally been rolled out as a celebration of BMW Motorrad’s 90th birthday ─ in 2014. One suspects the company didn’t expect the model to be as popular as it turned out to be. A decade later, the name doesn’t make sense; BMW is no longer celebrating its 90th birthday and previous R90 models ─ ie, the R90/6 and R90/S ─ had been powered by 900cc engines (well, 898 cc, to be precise), as opposed to the 1170cc twin driving the R nineT. So, BMW decided to put the bike’s name in line with the 1800cc R 18 cruiser, calling it the R 12. Except, they didn’t really do that. In what I assume was an attempt to avoid confusing R nineT fans, the bike formerly known as an R nineT became the “R 12 nineT.” Obviously. Meanwhile, at exactly the same time ─ as in, it was thrown into the same press release as the news about the renaming ─ BMW revealed that there would be a new bike, dubbed simply, the R 12.