I believe that the poor adoption of BMW bikes in North America is due to the perception that motorbikes are a toy to ride on sunny Sundays. Lawyers on Harleys or squids on GSXers. If you want a quick thrill for 2hrs then BMW is not your sexiest choice. HOWEVER – if you tour, commute, or ride year round then BMW is the overwhelming choice. Look at the parking spaces at your office and i’ll bet 10-50% are BMW, even though they only account for about 1% of bike sales. When the weather gets cold or it’s raining BMWs are the majority (at least where I live in Canada).

People that acutally use and depend on their bike ride BMW.

@Giom
Well, the U.S. has always taken time to warm up to new and better ideas. I think the biggest thing is the price difference and the different level of dedication. It’s interesting enough that the guys I talked to said you basically had to be a gadget freak or an engineer to really love and understand the Beamers.

I think we will see a warmer push to BMW in the near future, especially since they entered the 2009 Superbike World Championship. Now they have the HP2 Sport that is pretty much an exact replica of the actual 24 hrs of Oschersleben bikes that took 1st and 2nd.

I will be doing another history lesson either today or tomorrow about BMW Motorrad to help finish up and give a more recent history. Also, I will be doing a few articles about some bikes coming up within the next few days, as well.

I’ve owned 4 BMW bikes to date – from the C1 to the R1150RT. Loved every one of them.

Strange, though, that the US is so slow in warming up to the Motorrad
brand. Don’t worry, a South African, Pieter de Waal, is now vice president of Motorrad in the US. If he can do over there what he did for SA, that’ll all change.

Just curious… The current US economy downturn, is this hitting BMW car and bike sales alot?

Cheers