The Bike That Launched a Thousand Trips

[Hugh Janus]

Master and masterpiece. Hans Muth with a BMW 100 RS, a machine as shaped by the wind as it was by his pen. (Hans Muth Archive/)

When it comes to words describing colors, “black” and “white” are universally among the first a language develops, invariably followed by “red.”

After that, things get muddled. Don’t have a word for blue? You might describe it as the color of the sky. Purple? For centuries, people called it dark blue. Pink was just light red. So what’s the difference between a color that has no name yet and one that does?

Motorcyclists, like all devoted specialists, are their own linguists, inventing words and categories to describe the machines they ride. In 1976, BMW gifted motorcyclists with a machine that formally named a new class, and may have even invented it. The machine was the R 100 RS, and the word was Reisesport; translated literally, that’s “travel sport.”

One of Muth’s original drawings for the first RS. Wind-tunnel testing refined the fairing’s shape, but only slightly. (Hans Muth Archive/)

Motorcyclists like their categories clearly defined: chopper, tourer, motocrosser. A hyphenated term like sport-tourer seems forced somehow, as if it can’t make up its mind (though Honda’s neo-sports café is a more egregious example). Name-wise, sport-touring is a dark-blue solution at best.

This likely has to do with the way we ride in the United States. American-style touring grew out of bikes like Harley-Davidson’s Duo-Glide or Electra Glide, big agricultural engines loping along, riders sitting upright behind the Duo’s large windscreen or the Electra Glide’s batwing fairing, watching mile after mile of featureless Midwest road unspool. The RS was designed for something else altogether.

It’s easiest to define the first R 100 RS by its spectacular fairing, but of course that’s only one piece of its puzzle. Plenty of earlier bikes had fairings. Starting in 1971, Craig Vetter sold an absolutely astounding 689,000 Windjammers. Contemporary magazines were full of ads for models by Camber, Taylor, Wixom, Pacifico, and even the dreadful Bates Clipper.

To say the RS was a success is an understatement. It was revolutionary, and defined sport-touring as a class. (Hans Muth Archive/)

But the RS fairing was different, and it definitely set this bike apart. First, this was full-coverage bodywork, a seven-piece construction, fully five years before Honda would fit a factory fairing to its Gold Wing. It wasn’t engineered to batter the wind head on, but to slice elegantly through the air and provide downforce to enhance handling. It offered something that everyone could see: an integrated, deliberate, visually arresting design. Cycle World called it a “highly stylized full-body enclosure.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all aftermarket add-on but a fully integrated part of the overall design.

This was the responsibility of BMW’s Hans Muth. In a recent conversation, he said, “I proposed to focus on the rider as a part of the motorcycle, of man and motorcycle as inseparable, like a modern centaur.”

Muth is still vibrant, engaged, passionate, and quite active today. (Hans Muth Archive/)

The fairing, tank and tailsection looked as though they had grown on the bike organically, intended from the start to work together. This was a real motorcycle cockpit, including a dash with built-in instrumentation and integrated ignition switch. The fourth bodywork element, the side covers, were blacked out, disappearing visually, preserving the pure line. The RS has Muth’s thumbprint all over it. That signature Muth “fly line” would again appear with the Suzuki Katana.

Inventing a Class

It’s hard to describe the impact of the RS when it first appeared. Cycle called it “the most radical-looking motorcycle the world has ever seen.” Previous BMWs had been reliable, smooth, relatively boring bikes, black as a Steinway piano, and with about as much deliberate style as a pair of pliers. Muth’s earlier effort, the R 90 S, began to change that, but the R 100 RS put BMW into another league altogether. Then there was the price: $4,595 with wire wheels, an additional $400 for the cast proto-snowflake units, close to twice the price of a Gold Wing. Cycle World said it was “astronomical”; Cycle “wallet-flattening.”

The RS was sport-touring’s Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Those ships were bikes like Yamaha’s FJ1100 and FJ1200, Kawasaki’s Concours 1000, Honda’s ST1100 and ST1300, all the way up to our current sport-touring two-wheelers, including BMW’s own R 1250 RS.

While introduced 45 years ago, the original RS doesn’t look out of place today, a testament to how far ahead it was. (Hans Muth Archive/)

With the rise of the Reisesport, the R 100 RS gave us a machine combining the performance pedigree of an open-class sportbike and substantial elemental protection. Here was a fast, powerful motorcycle, easily capable of cruising at 115–120 mph, not La-Z-Boy relaxed, but something more athletic, definitely appropriate for covering long distances. It offered a 6.3-gallon fuel capacity; a speedo, tach, clock, and ammeter; and a droolworthy tool kit. What it didn’t offer was detachable luggage, a staple of today’s sport-touring bikes. That would come in a couple of years with Krauser saddlebags resembling Samsonite suitcases.

Cycle called the first R 100 RS “BMW’s Corvette,” adding that it possessed “an assurance, contentment, and arrogance all its own.” Time has proven they were right on the mark. Notably, neither Cycle nor Cycle World even once used the term “Sport Touring.” The RS was ahead of our vocabulary.

For me, that first RS was a conundrum. Like my colleagues, I didn’t have a word to express it or a category by which to judge it. It was definitely European, when that still meant exotic. And it was most definitely German in its precise, deliberate, uncompromising execution. When I finally got to Europe and was able to ride there, I understood it better. Big and fast, it was both attractive and a little intimidating, like a Helmut Newton nude. Pricewise it was unattainable, which made many want it all the more. But it legitimized and enabled the way many of us wanted to ride: solo, quickly, over a considerable distance, with just a tank bag for luggage and whatever we could fit in our jacket pockets.

Muth’s latest project is a reimagination of the RS using the running gear from BMW’s current R nineT. (Hans Muth Archive/)

I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that the original R 90 S, R 100 RS, and R 80 G/S made BMW’s motorcycle division the company it is in 2022. That the R 100 RS gave us the sport-touring bike as we know it is even more certain.

Source

[Pedro]

Twice the price of a Goldwing would be 60 or 70.000€ today. Did the Goldwing become more expensive or the BMW relatively cheaper?

[yen_powell]

I saw the thread title and thought it was  going to be a potted history of 66 motorbikes. I am disappoint.

[Tym]

That thing looks like refried beans on a breakfast taco in Queens.

 

This is what drop dead looks like.

 

[skyrider]

14 hours ago, Tym said:

That thing looks like refried beans on a breakfast taco in Queens.

 

This is what drop dead looks like.

 

best colour