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Was reading an article over at motorcyclists-online.com where they did an interview with Markus Biebricher at the BMW-Motorrad factory. Looks like the ever increasing emissions laws could lead to the demise of BMW's iconic boxer twin. The design apparently is just too cumbersome to allow liquid cooling to be engineered into it because the heads would stick out way too far, and without liquid cooling emissions would be too high in the future.

It'll be a sad day if BMW has to drop their boxer twin. I wonder if they could even survive such a drastic change if all they can offer is the same engine designs as the Japanese. Who knows, maybe they'll come up with something different that leads to another 80 or so years of BMW uniqueness.

Gee, looks like the pencil necked geeks are going to take over the world. I wonder if they are going to hold that Russian Ural to the same standard?

Can I have one if I buy a few of Al "Chicken-Little" Gore's carbon offsets?

-BT

i cant see it being anything other than bad for them

Frank

Liquid cooling??? If they have to move to liquid cooling so does everybody else. Thats a crock, I don't believe him for one second. You can build a clean air cooled engine.

I think he is making excuses for the elimination of a line so the purest can blame somebody other than BMW.

Yeah trees are stupid!

They did just come out with that new parallel trin motor, I know it's not totally original, but at least it's not typical. As for the Ural, they won't have to be held to the standards, unless if they want to sell them in europe

Well at some point in the future you have to figure that increasingly strict Euro emissions regs are going to going to do away with air and oil cooled motors. Have you seen the movie I Robot? Remember when Will Smith busted out the old gas burning sportbike? While "just a movie", I think at some point that will happen. Of course it will be long after all of us are dead.

But in the meantime, I'm off to the local BMW dealer's open house today to take a bike or two out for a demo ride. Looking forward to climbing on a 1200RT. Hope they have one available.

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the deal is BMW wants to
whittle down the casting mass a bit too.
There are cheaper ways to get to x displacement than
twin opposed hanging out the sides. Remember the K series Bricks?

Its too bad I always loved that boxer motor. That and they run forever. Maybe thats part of it...not enough breakage in them to sell parts.

Seems to me that they discontinued those once before because their wonderful inline engine was supposed to be so great.

You know, of course, that a part of the attraction of the liquid cooled engine is noise reduction, so they have reasons other than chemical emissions to get rid of air cooling.

I am surprised that no one is protesting the elimination of air cooled engines based in the increase of water consumption because, last I heard, all of Europe was under water conserving rules because of a long term drought. Then, there is the issue of disposing of old antifreeze, which is somewhat toxic...

Shame, shame, shame.

They planned to do away with the boxer a few years ago, but because of the complaints from BMW fans around the globe they changed their minds. Hope they change their minds again this time to.

But with the tree huggers getting more and more of their own way the day will come when Triumph will have to think very hard about wether to keep the air cooled twins.

Remember the two strokes. I dont know if it was the tree huggers who were responsible for their demise. But there are a few Two Stokes bikes that i always liked, but would be very wary of riding now for the abuse you would get when ever you opened the things up and buried every one behind you in a thick fog of blue smoke