[Trevor Rossack]

Here is a mostly favourable review of the K1200S that appears in the October issue of the UK magazine - SUPERBIKE. There are some very interesting parts (eg. - possible traction control) and makes for more good reading.



First ride - When news of a BMW sports bike hit Superbike's office we didn't believe our ears. JP packed his biggest cigars and headed sausage-side to report on how Bavaria's finest has entered the mainstream

POWERKRAUT words - Jonathon Pearson

You're not going to believe it, hell I didn't either, but this bike works. This bike represents BMW's first foray into the sports bike market, a brave move you might say, given the established crowd of Japanese manufactures and their range of bikes. Specifically, the K1200S sits alongside the Suzuki Hayabusa, Kawasaki ZX-12R and Honda Blackbird in the hyper sports market. But the news is that - in face of that kind of opposition - the K1200S stands up exceptionally well. It works in a way no other Beemer has before - just like a Japanese in-line four.

BMW rented the top two floors of the tallest (and emptiest) building in Munich for the press introduction With views across the whole city, the saying that BMW owns half of Munich certainly seemed true as one BMW logo after another BMW logo lit up the evening sky.

Maybe I'm a cynic but presentations of a new model get less and less interesting partly because they only ever re-iterate what we already know or is written in the press pack but largely because all I really want to do is ride the bike and ask questions later. So in between bouts of note taking (page one in my notebook reads, "Edagar Heimlich? That can't be right!") I found myself more interested in whether the gloriously beautiful woman on my left actually had any pants on. I'm still not sure - about Heimlich I mean.

The next day dawned very hot and humid in central Europe but a 100km-odd blast of autobahn, which lay before us to the first photo location just over the Austrian border, looked a great way to keep cool. First sight and feeling of the bike makes you think this is smaller and lighter than expected. It's no ZX-10R but it feels smaller than the more lardy class rivals. The all new, in-line four 1,157cc motor is, without a doubt, ****ing fast. It should be with a claimed 167bhp and it'll need to be to match the Bird/Busa/12Rs of this world. Thankfully the autobahns south of Munich, towards Austria, remain speed-limit-free and there's no question this thing tramps along very, very quickly. You know a bike's fast when you find yourself braking to ABS testing point and flashing your lights at the prat who's just pulled into the fast lane without looking, only to find when you look down at the speedo he's been 'pootling along' actually doing 100mph any way. That said I never quite topped-it out - 270kph (167mph) being the maximum I managed before needing to brake for a car or corner but there were revs still to spare.

It doesn't have the low down surge you associate with the Busa or Blackbird but needs revving more like the ZX-12R to get the best from it (judged by sports 600 levels of torque this sentence is nonsense of course). It also lacks some of the refinment of the Honda and comes across as more mechanical. A number of other testers present on the launch bemoaned an inconsistent fuel injection and throttle delivery, especially at low speeds through towns. It may have been the hot weather but I didn't find the same problems but felt it worth noting. The flip side is there's no over-sensitivity that you find from a Honda throttle.

There's also a distinct feeling of some form of traction control. Open the throttle hard to the point at which you'd expect wheel spin out of a corner and there's a real feeling of power being temporarily damped. Only by a small amount, but enough to stop wheel spin on grippy Alpine roads. Experimenting with it on a straight road demonstrated that you could actually accelerate faster by not using all the throttle.

"Built-in corrective functions" are operated by a "potentionmeter" which determines the engines "operating point" by measuring the engine speed and throttle body position. Couple this with the biggest exhaust can not fitted to a Scania truck ( which hepls the K12S easily meet EU emission standards) and there is a real sense that mid-revs power has been "optimised" to reduce engine response. In short it could be more powerful thatn it is at lower revs. The reason for all this is primarily to stop us falling off every time we open the throttle but I'd rather have the option.