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The rest of BMW's new bigger boxer line has been introduced. Are they still compelling?
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. BMW recently announced the other R1300 based boxer models, including the R1300R Roadster, the R1300RS, the Sportbike with some touring chops, and, of course, the venerable R1300RT, the touring bike. We'll cover all three in this episode and explore what is different and if they're worth considering for your next bike.
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So let's start with the R1300R. Now, this is a Roadster design that evolved from the original standard style in earlier iterations. In fact, I owned an earlier version with the oil-cooled R1200R, which was that classic Roadster design with a round headlight. Now, the mechanics of that bike live on in the R9T line along with the other round headlight. But beginning with the R1200R with the water-cooled engine, the Roadster took a turn toward more of a Street Fighter style.
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I traded in my R1200R for my S1000R, mostly because of the power and weight improvements.
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And that is a true Street Fighter bike, which, aesthetically, is in that same design as the newer R12 and 1250R models have been. Now, the new R1300R looks nearly identical to the current S1000R, minus the silly little wings in the front. But it has that very aggressive headlight design. And if you like the classic Roadster style, the RNineT is probably the one that makes more sense.
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It will be that older oil-cooled engine design, so it won't have the same power. It's about 110 horsepower, roughly. But if you like that Street Fighter style, the R1300R and the S1000R are definitely ones to consider. Now, when I got my S1000R, it had 160 horsepower versus the 110 horsepower that was on my R1200R.
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This was a huge bump in power.
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But it was also about 50 pounds lighter. So your power-to-weight ratio was an insane change from my old bike. But, the downside, I'd say, is that an inline four just doesn't have the character that a boxer motor has. In fact, out of my whole fleet, my S1000R is probably the bike that I always think about getting rid of the most. Because it's just the one that just, it's fast, it's quick, there's just no character to it. And if you like bikes and motors with character, that's not going to be it. And this is where the new R1300R, sporting 145 horsepower and 527 pounds of weight can get you a lot closer. This is nearly the performance of an S1000R in terms of its horsepower, or at least my S1000R with similar looks, but it has a much more character-filled motor. Now, it's not going to compete directly against the current-gen S1000R, because that is still more power and lighter weight.
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But if you don't need that maximum, maximum performance, and to be honest, even my S1000R, you can't use its full potential public roads. It's just, there's just not enough space, realistically. But this new R1300R, if you like that Street Fighter style, could be a really amazing option. So, I think it's something that if you like that naked bike, really take a look at it.
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Okay, let's look at the new R1300RS. Now, the RS, if we're kind of honest about it, has been a bit of an awkward part of the boxer line. When the first oil head bikes appeared in the mid-90s, the R1100RS was released with a sort of Goldilocks sport tour approach.
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It didn't have as big of a fairing as the RT, but it had a little bit more than the R had at the time. And many people just threw a windshield on the R and used it for touring. I did, in fact, because that's how I had my original R with the R1200R, a little bit later generation, but still... and so the rs was never as big of a seller and it was discontinued for a bit and they even tried a couple of other variants there was the ST at one point but they didn't tend to last more than a year or bmw brought it back in an generation with a little bit of a clearer mission that they were going for and it was a little bit more of an s1000 double r with a boxer motor and some better touring options so it was really that more on the sport end of the equation for sport touring and had the aesthetic of the double r and this new r1300rs continues that same approach the bike looks very similar to the double r with the sharp sporty nose it does not of course have the little winglets up in the front which for a road going bike is a little gimmicky if i'm honest about it but this is what happens they want to be replicas for the sport bikes that are actually on the track but in any case the other advantage is that you have lower handlebars on this bike they're not quite clip-ons of the double r so they will have a little bit more comfort for touring but it is a much more aggressive riding style. This bike though it does have some elements that allow to really work well for more touring purposes and you saw this with beginning with the r1300gs where it had the adaptive cruise control and this sort of odd space almost like a angled square that's up in the front of the bike and this provides adaptive cruise control it's sort of a radar mount and they've now incorporated this into the rs as well and of course it has mounts for hard bags to make it really fit into that touring mission so if you were looking at maybe some of the kawasaki sport touring bikes this might be another good option for you because it will have the performance for you to do some canyon carving not quite at the let's be honest discomfort level that the double r will have but not quite at the same performance envelope but still allows you to go touring with it if you want so kind of that goldilocks if you will and i'd say put simply it's a sport bike made for touring now admittedly this is all shades of gray as the rt is also a sport touring bike but it leans more towards the touring end of that spectrum while the rs leans more towards the sport end of the spectrum. now comparing it to the roadster that we just discussed more wind protection than the r means that you can ride in cooler temperatures or avoid the drag of the wind at highway speed rides and like the roadster the R1300R, the RS has that same 145 horsepower 1300cc boxer engine of about 540 pounds wet weight so if the s1000 double r feels too single purpose for you the r1300rs might be the right bike for you.
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OK, let's talk about the R1300RT. Now the rt or Reisse Tour as in long trip is really the model in BMW's lineup that has been around since the late 1970s in fact it predates the GS even though the GS is probably the best selling model within bmw's range the RT has predated it and so if you wanted to travel long distance and be well protected from the elements the RT has always been a solid option and it's often touted as the icon of the sport touring realm and the RT does differ from that RS that we just spoke about in being a bit more touring oriented than canyon carving it doesn't mean that the RT can't carve some fast roads and you can see many of them it's used by the california highway patrol you can you see many of these bikes carving it up pretty aggressively but there is some physics that still gets in the way it is a larger bike there's more fairings there's more weight the bags are intended to be mostly permanent although you can remove them so it is a little bit more of that touring orientation.
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Now this new model does take on a bit more of an angular design and has the space in the nose for the adaptive cruise control, like the RS and the GS and the GSA before it. And this angular design does remind me a lot of the GS and in particular, the new GSA. If you look at the way the tank cut out is, it's effectively almost like two notches is the extent of it is just, you know, going in and then one angle and cutting out.
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And so it looks like a lot of very flat space up in the front of the bike.
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And the previous generation was a little bit more flowing lines.
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There was more curves. There was more lines within it to break up these large surfaces. So this is something where the aesthetics may or may not appeal to you as you start to look at this particular bike. And that sensor in the front does also take up a very noticeable amount of space in the front and it may not appeal to everyone. And that previous model, the R-1250RT, had more of like a hawk like appearance to it. It still had a very almost sharp beak like nose, but it had more lines to it. It was more flowing in some ways.
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This new RT with the large flat panels that it sort of borrows from the GSA has a little bit more of a flat appearing windshield. If you actually look at it dead straight on, it almost looks like the front of the bike is fully flat. It has a little bit of a go curve to it as you had in the previous generation. And it's not entirely true, but it just has that more of an appearance. it does have, I will say, some really phenomenal looking LED running light lines. You'll see this in a lot of the BMW cars where they'll just have that one little line of LED lights just running along the sides. And it does give a bit of character to the bike. It looks pretty good.
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This bike has the same 145 horsepower that we saw in the RS and in the the R but this bike also has 110 foot pounds of torque. And that torque is similar to that of many American cruisers. But of course, it has significantly more horsepower.
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I'm wondering now if this bike is going to start to really almost compete more directly with some of those large American cruisers. So think of things like the Road King, you know, the Street Glide. These type of bikes, the Indian Pursuit, all these bikes have that sort of classic American V-twin. So if you're dead set on it has to be a V-twin, an American V-twin. Yes, you're not going to compete on this. But if you wanted a good long-distance touring bike and you love the low-end torque that you get from a V-twin, 110 foot pounds of torque out of a boxer twin is really great.
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But then you have the top end, you have that 145 horsepower. So it will be fun to ride in the low-end and fun to ride in the high-end. So it's kind of a cool setup. when I first rode the GS, if you remember from the episode where I compared the new R1300GS, the F900GS, and then my current R1200GSA, I didn't love the motor on the GS. And it's the same motor that's in these three bikes. And it's not that I didn't love it in terms of it having power. It had plenty of power. It was in many ways similar to my S1000R in that it just had plenty of power top.
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You could go whenever you wanted to. And that was beautiful about it. The thing that I found was and this just comes as you start to add in more water cooling into a bike, you start to more shelter the internals of the engine. And it was so smooth that it didn't really have the character that I was used to in previous gen boxer engines And nowhere, of course, close to that of my R18. but I did remark to myself at the time and thinking but if you were doing a lot of highway riding if you were doing a lot of long distance touring this engine could actually be really really great because you don't necessarily want for long droning hour after hour after hour on let's say a highway you don't want to have that characterful engine because it will just become tiring. So a smooth engine much like BMW's k1600GT is insanely smooth that's that inline six is very very smooth it's perfect for those type of situations and I think this new engine put into the RT this is really I think the sweet spot for this new motor because this is what it is in a sense truly built for well if you were considering big cruiser having a bike that is just so easy to accelerate and get up to speed is super helpful. The other beauty is that yeah maybe you're not so keen on wanting to use the clutch anymore well this has an automated shift assistant available so if you want to do it riding and not have to worry about a clutch this bike will have that as an option. of course we did talk about the adaptive cruise control and that little module that's sitting in the front of the bike there's two additional features on the RT that push the tech level just up to the top even further. But the first one is some moving aero pieces now just like i said before there's a couple of large flat panels well two of those panels one on either side of the bike actually move and rotate up with the bike as you get up to speed and this can give a little bit more wind protection to the rider as they're getting up into higher and higher velocities. In a lot of ways if you've ever tried out the Moto Guzzi V100 Mandelo that has similar aero pieces that do move as you get up to speed this is very very similar concept to that so it can still have a little bit more airflow at slower speeds but then give you more wind protection as you get up to faster speeds so really kind of cool. And this last one I think is where it really cements the BMW RT as the epitome of a sport touring motorcycle and what this is is dynamic chassis adaption.
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Now this sounds like BMW has these really quite honestly horrible naming conventions that they do for some of their features they sound very grandiose but what this is doing is it's not just changing the damping of the springs or adjusting the preload. This actually adjusts the relative position of the bike. What I mean by that is it actually can raise the rear of the bike to give a more aggressive feeling for carving canyons as opposed to more of a flat layer that you might do for just normal touring. So if you've ever looked at like an S1000 R or even a double R you'll see that the rear seems it's almost like a runner in the starting blocks it's the rear is a little bit more set up. Well this RT can actually change to be like that as you're riding along so it's really really cool. other thing I'd say that's really this sort of benefit over the traditional American V-Twin cruisers for long distance touring most cruisers because of their focus on the very very low seat height tend to have very little suspension travel as well.
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It's not unusual to see maybe three to four four and a half inches of suspension travel and that's it. Well the RT actually has six inches of travel on the front. This bike can absorb a lot of imperfect roads in fact I've had a friend of mine who was following me on an RT on the R1250 RT. I was on my GS and we were riding down a bit of a road that turned into a forest road and I said hey happy to turn around and he's like no no we'll just keep going. This is really one of those seasonally maintained roads and while the RT is not meant for dirt, it has so much more travel than a typical cruiser, it was able to get through this and be completely happy and fine about it. So that seat height won't be as low as a cruiser although BMW does offer seat heights as low as 30.7 inches with the low comfort seat and for the taller riders you can have up to 33.8 inches with the high comfort seat. Now, of course, all the seats have some adjustment on height. There's kind of a low and a high position, but the stock seat will give you between 32. 2 and inches of seat height.
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The other thing is 6.3 gallons of fuel capacity means it'll be a little bit of a while before you run out of gas and need to fill up. So it's perfect for those long distance tours. And while the GS and the GSA have been sales leaders for BMW in the boxer segment, and for good reason. They're great bikes. The long way around series of documentaries really cemented the GS as the globe trotting bike. But in truth, that meme that you've probably seen of perfectly clean GSs, not a spot of dirt on them, parked outside of a Starbucks doesn't come from nowhere. There are plenty of riders who never take their GS on any dirt whatsoever. And for them, the RT might be the better option. It's going to have just as much tour and sport capabilities as the GS. The new dynamic chassis adaption probably gives it even a little bit more because it doesn't have quite the very long suspension travel that you'll get with a GS.
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It will be a little bit more sport, it won't be quite as floaty over the roads as you would get. And so it's going to be a little bit more of that sport feeling toward it. So it's probably a better option.
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We've covered all three of the new BMW boxer motors that were recently announced, looking at who they may be for and what new capabilities each of them have. So my question for you is what do you think about these new boxers? Is one of them calling your name? Share your thoughts through the text the show link in the show notes, or leave us a voicemail at throttle and roast dot com slash voicemail.
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Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
