BMW in 25 years of 1000PS: from swot to benchmark

"The most powerful naked bike in the world comes from Bavaria. The bar is set high!" That's how our 2005 test of the K 1200 R began, and a few lines further down was the sentence that summed up BMW for us for a long time: "It's as if the biggest swot in the class, of all people, bedded the PE teacher on the school ski trip." The swot was the "stuffy Bavarians": thorough, reliable, a bit dull. And suddenly the fastest. Today the swot has become top of the class. We've talked about no brand more on YouTube: almost every seventh minute in which we discussed a motorcycle brand was about BMW. But you don't stay top of the class all by yourself. Here's how BMW got there, what it cost us riders, and why the others have since learned their lessons too.

Hand on heart: in our early years, BMW was the stuffy Bavarian to us. In 2003 there isn't a single editorial BMW piece in our archive, only dealer announcements. Our BMW story begins in July 2004 with the K 1200 S and a verdict full of relief: "Finally the Bavarians finally let rip in motorcycle building too. Until now, the Bavarians have proved to us motorcyclists that they can build ultimately awesome engines through humiliating autobahn defeats against M3 and M5 suburban cages." What we meant: BMW's cars had long been humiliating us on the autobahn, and now at last a BMW bike showed what the Bavarians had in them. A year later the K 1200 R cost 15,990 euros, and we wrote: "The price is hot. Sorry folks! But it has to be said. List price: 15,990 euros. Gulp." Remember that gulp. Price follows BMW through this whole story.

In 2006, in our R 1200 S test, we openly admitted how we had seen BMW until then: "Years ago I'd have struggled to find a BMW model I'd voluntarily put in my garage. Since then a lot has happened, a great deal in fact." So the bikes were already better than their reputation. The reputation itself, though, we didn't yet credit BMW with. After the wild HP2 Megamoto we wrote in 2007: "Even in the minds of those motorcycle freaks with enough money in the bank, BMW's image change won't be quite complete yet. It will take a while before they too believe that BMW builds really sharp machines." How long did it take? Two years. Then BMW brought out a superbike, and for us the image question was settled.

On 24 November 2009 the S 1000 RR stood in Portimão, and we wrote: "The wait is over! BMW has let its motorcycle division off the leash. … 193 horses are now the new benchmark in the class." Even more on our minds was the riding mode switch: "A pack of engineers is replaced by a button." The setup that used to require specialists now sat in a switch. In 2010 we started filming, and almost nine out of ten minutes we spent on BMW models that year were about the S 1000 RR. It won the big superbike comparison in June 2010, and on the dyno came the punchline for the competition: "the BMW, as a matter of course, always puts out more on the dyno than the brochure promises." From the Japanese we were used to the opposite.

The next turning point came in February 2013: the first water-cooled R 1200 GS. Many GS riders feared for the Boxer's character, but we could reassure them: "there's more Boxer spirit in it than ever before." In June we found the image that has stuck ever since: "If there were such a thing as a Golf class for motorcycles, meaning a car that defines an entire class, then in the adventure bike segment it would probably be the GS. Everyone wants to be like it." The test report added: "The 'new one' is at the same time the best GS of all time and, pragmatically speaking, offers no grounds for criticism whatsoever. It'll sell like hot cakes." But the same piece also contained a warning that only really mattered years later: "But the competition is going to get damn dangerous for the R 1200 GS."

In 2014 we shot more BMW videos than ever before or since: 82 of them. The first surprise concerned ourselves. One of us was convinced the KTM Super Duke was unbeatable and had already bought one. Then came the comparison: "In the first comparisons with the S 1000 R, though, it turned out that despite the 20 hp it lacks, the S 1000 R is closer to the Super Duke R than we thought." Twenty hp down and still right on its tail – that was a statement. The second surprise was the R nineT, a retro bike with an air-cooled Boxer: "What came out is a product you now think has always been there. You could almost say it's the founder of this segment, the cafe racer." Suddenly the swot could do cool, too.

Between 2015 and 2019 BMW's range was broader than ever: twelve model lines appeared regularly on our channel, from the little G 310 to the six-cylinder K 1600. By the end of 2015 we had spotted the pattern: "BMW simply grazes every segment. … A few years ago they also entered the superbike class with the S 1000 RR. Back then we said, BMW, well, is that going to work? Yes, it worked." Our videos changed too. Three-minute clips turned into nine-minute tests, later more than twenty minutes, because every new BMW had more to explain: riding modes, packages, accessories. In 2018 we called the brand the "accessories world champion". In 2019 BMW got more airtime from us than ever before: a good one in every six minutes we spent talking about a brand.

In those years we became more honest about the GS. In 2016 we said: "A magnificent touring bike that is perhaps not sharply enough positioned. … it's not the most powerful, the lightest, not the most off-road capable. So not the absolute class leader anywhere. But a truly, truly tremendous all-rounder." The same year we wrote that the air-cooled R nineT was "A monument to the Boxer and its last unadulterated embodiment." It sounded like the end of an era. In 2018, with the R 1250 GS, we contradicted ourselves: "Twenty years ago they were already saying the development of the Boxer had reached its end. … And of course I'm sure that the development of the Boxer is far from finished." Since then the R 1300 GS and the R 12 family have arrived. Our swan song of 2016 came too early. And thank goodness for that!

In 2019 the image of the perfect swot got its first crack – not on the bike, but in deliveries. About the new S 1000 RR we said in April: "Dude, where are they? Where are the bikes? … it won't be delivered until June at the earliest. A bumpy start." In December we got fundamental, because it didn't stop at one model: "And some purchasing hotshot, a manager, is obviously squeezing a poor supplier so hard that he can't deliver the required quality after all. They're already doing it on a few models." A buyer squeezing every last cent out of the supplier until the quality falls short: in 2019 that was only a suspicion. Remember the sentence anyway. Five years later it comes back – on the GS, of all bikes.

2020 brought the R 18, a cruiser with a 1,802 cc Boxer. First the warning that had long been tradition with BMW: "Try it, take a look, do the configuration and be shocked by what it says at the bottom right." Bottom right in the configurator is the price. But then came a defence you rarely hear from us, against the criticism from Germany of its own product: "It's somehow a strange German thing that people don't celebrate their own products with patriotism and pride. … because it really is a major achievement." And in 2021, on the R 18 Classic: "The first bike I've sat on where I had the feeling I'm somebody." Praise and a price warning in the same breath: that's how we've talked about BMW for as long as we've been reporting on BMW.

By now the GS was the benchmark against which everyone else had to be measured. In February 2021 we announced the comparison with the Ducati Multistrada like this: "The perfect, the flawless, the faultless money-printing machine from Bavaria, the blockbuster of recent years, the BMW R 1250 GS … takes on a new challenger from Italy." The verdict: "There is no flaw on the GS", and yet the blend of sportiness and comfort worked "even better on the Multistrada than on the GS." Ducati became the new favourite rival. In our early video years, KTM was the competitor we named most often in BMW videos; from 2020 it was Ducati. Against the newcomer from America, the Harley-Davidson Pan America, the GS stayed clearly ahead: "The BMW is more mature, more grown-up and therefore better in many respects."

In January 2022 came the CE 04 electric scooter: "BMW wants to start the quiet revolution with the new CE 04, which fires the starting gun for BMW's future urban mobility, which will be purely electric." The same month we turned thoughtful. We had noticed that expensive bikes were being made cheaper in the details and compensated with software, at the same price: "These tendencies make me kind of nervous. Because who knows what comes next." 2023 was quiet, with only 13 BMW videos, fewer than in any year since 2010. With the GS, dealers had "the strongest horse in the stable", but also a problem we addressed openly: "The buyers are relatively old." Then in autumn came a new GS, and with it the most turbulent years of this story.

In October 2023 I rode the new BMW R 1300 GS for four days, with plenty of curiosity and knowing just how closely you all scrutinise this bike. Afterwards we sat in front of the configurator, 24,400 euros in Germany, and out came a sentence you'd hardly ever heard from us about BMW: "It's insane that I get to experience this, that a BMW doesn't feel that expensive at all." For context: in 2005 we gulped at 15,990 euros for the K 1200 R, and in 2018 the R 1250 GS was "already almost at 20,000 euros". So the new GS was expensive too, but it felt worth the money. The joy lasted exactly four months.

In February 2024 our long term test bike was in the workshop after just 700 kilometres, getting a new engine. We'd had bad luck on a grand scale: "52 1300 GS bikes are affected worldwide. You've got to manage that, to end up with one of them." It didn't end there. In 2024 there was a recall for the Vario cases, and the plastic gear lever became an issue. In our BMW videos, words like defect, recall and reliability came up around seventy percent more often than in our early video years. At Christmas 2024 we took stock after 13,000 kilometres: "But nevertheless you have a certain expectation of quality … when you buy a GS. And in our view it doesn't meet it, at least not in the first year." For the bike that stood for reliability for decades, that's a harsh verdict.

In spring 2025 we mourned the character of its predecessor, whose Boxer pulled hard right from the bottom: "It could easily have stayed a torque hammer and that would have been fine." Then in May 2025 came the harshest words we've ever said about BMW: "That I find it inappropriate to deliver a bike in a seemingly unfinished state. And what BMW has delivered here is, for me, simply and plainly embarrassing." In September 2025 we ended the long-term test after 17,000 kilometres, and the reason was uncomfortably honest: "It was simply noticeable that interest in this vehicle dropped significantly over this season. Our click numbers said as much." You too had heard enough about the problems and voted with your mouse.

And now the punchline of those years: in exactly this period, BMW sold more bikes than ever. In January 2025 we reported: "BMW Motorrad achieved the strongest sales result in its history in 2024 with 210,408 motorcycles delivered." On top of that came over 20,000 scooters from the urban division. After that things got better, and we took back a fair bit. In October 2025 we said: "BMW has carried out quality assurance." In December, after 10,000 kilometres with the latest GS generation: "Everything on the GS worked well, we had none of the feared failures from before." And in January 2026: "In a declining overall segment above 500 cc, BMW was able to gain +4.1 percentage points of market share." The mistrust hasn't vanished completely. Asked whom we'd trust with the next 100,000 kilometres, in 2026 we had "more confidence in the Honda than in the BMW".

On price, little has changed in twenty years – we just talk about it more openly today. And more often: price, expensive and surcharge come up around fifty percent more often in our BMW videos today than in our early video years. In February 2026, in the big GS comparison, we said about the new R 12 G/S: "I think I fiddled around in the configurator for half a year and kept throwing in the towel because it was just too expensive for me … but that's how it is, people are so deppert, like me, you can't stand it, it's just awesome." Deppert is what Austrians say when someone isn't quite in their right mind, and anyone who's configured a bike themselves knows the feeling.

Now the uncomfortable part: settling accounts with ourselves. In 2007 we thought it would take a while before customers believed BMW could build sharp machines. Two years later came the S 1000 RR. A hit, just sooner than expected. In 2013 we called the new GS "the best GS of all time", and that verdict appeared again in tests from 2017 and 2021. In 2026 it only managed third place in our own Top Awards. Not because the GS got worse, but because the competition caught up, just as we predicted in 2013. In 2019 we suspected squeezed suppliers; five years later came the recalls. In 2022 cost-cutting on expensive models made us nervous; in 2025 we said "embarrassing". And the CE 04 as a "quiet revolution"? It came, but only in the city. To this day there's no big electric bike from BMW in our archive.

In August 2026 we read out the results of our Top Awards: "For years it was the superstar among adventure bikes and the bestseller … it didn't get enough votes to make it to first place. Third place is a respectable result, the competition is strong … but the competition is stronger." Fact is: BMW has stopped being the exception and has become the yardstick everyone measures themselves against. That has made the competition better, and you benefit as a buyer, no matter which brand is in your garage. Over all these years we've praised and criticised BMW, got things wrong and corrected ourselves, but never just waved it through. The swot of 2005 has grown up. The class copied his homework, and that's the finest compliment you can pay a swot.

In October 2001, 1000PS.at went online as Nils Müller's diploma thesis project at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt. It has since grown into a platform that combines motorcycle journalism, community and digital solutions for the industry. For our 25th anniversary in October 2026, this series looks back at the development of the motorcycle brands – drawing on a quarter century of our own reporting, many kilometres ridden ourselves and the curiosity that has driven us since day one: What comes next?