BMW Oldest Bikes History ,Data And Pictures ~ BMW Cars & Bikes

1936_BMW_R12

A pre-war BMW, which is the one you see in the old WWII news films. Because of its reliability, the Army had Harley Davidson make copies of it but few exist because they weren’t finished until after the war. Some claim this was the first bike to have telescopic forks, but Nimbus beat it by one year.

BMW R2 Old Bike

R2. This was a series 1 and was quite complete and in decent running condition and we used it often in various events. It had two solo seats and was fun to show passengers the mid 30s BMW experience.
R17. A 750 cc overhead valve sport bike of the late 30s. It had a beautiful valenced front fender with an interesting oval shaped cutout in it. I never had it running because of missing clutch parts.

BMW R17 Old Bike

1966_bmw_r27

The r27 was the last of the 250cc singles made by bmw, and is widely held as the best of them all. it had the most power, and the engine and drive train was, for the first time, suspended on rubber mounts! making the ride much smoother than the previous r26.
250cc. this bike was sold new by roman cycle shop, inc. on may 10th, 1966 and purchased back off the original buyer in 1969 with 102 actual miles. this is a like new 41 year old bike complete with tool kit, tire repair kit, owners manual, bmw shop rag, and a copy of the original bill of sale. picture provided by roman cycle shop, youngstown, ohio

BMW R69, 1956.

R69, 1956. When BMW came out with the Earles fork models they showed several weaknesses. Most of them were fixed and came out in mid 57. It was called the accessory group and even advertised. I restored it in 1974. This one is now owned by my long time friend, Peter Brewer. It took me 10 years to find all of the "bad" parts to make it correct.

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R75 sport solo bike. After the war the allies restricted motorcycle companies to only 250 cc bikes. In 1950 that was altered to allow 500 cc bikes. It was late 60s until they were allowed to make a 750. The war had ended and BMW had been bombed to rubble. They were cash strapped and had to do something. The found some old R75 military motors and built a special frame similar to the R71 for it. I heard that maybe as many as a few dozen were built and sold "under the table" to rich sport riders. The engine was highly modified and very powerful. I ran across one at some BMW rally. The owner had only some slight knowledge of his bike. I bought it and spent the next couple of years trying to get the full story. I learned that of the several factories that had been converted to BMW motorcycle production some continued to make motorcycles. We were never sure that the bike was made by BMW. It was popular, in Germany, for private owners to use the military engine in an old frame. The frame had to be modified slightly for it to fit. When this one finally was stripped of paint then we could see that it hadn't been modified, but had been specially built for that engine. It has now ended up in the hands of Joe Groeger who has fixed a clutch and transmission problem. This bike is very powerful for something so old. It has been raced in the vintage class in the San Francisco Bay Area