Turning Back the Clock

Call it trite but I have a soft spot for the BMW R1200GS.

I'm not really sure why because it's too heavy, too tall and too expensive for me to rationally decide to purchase one.  And like most modern German vehicular products, it has too many electronics for me.  I think BMW feels the need to put electronics everywhere because...You know, I really don't know why.  Maybe it's because they can and so professors in high-viz will continue to buy them.

But what really puts me off buying the GS is the styling.  It's a bit of a mess.  It tries to look butch and utilitarian but instead looks confused.

For starters, the headlamps are two different sizes and that's just odd.  Combining that with the beak-like protrusion makes the front of the bike look like a plague doctor's outfit.  Another thing I don't get is the beak, which I'm guessing is supposed to look like a motocross fender, and the tire-hugging front fender.  How many front fenders does one bike need?  There's also a bit of plastic hugging the rear tire.  Why?  Isn't that just going to pack with mud as you bound across Tajikistan?  Then there's the exhaust, which is enormous and mounted perilously low on a bike with off-road pretensions. 

So there it is: I like a bike that I don't like. 

Thanks to the Italians at Unit Garage, though, there is some hope for the GS after all.  For about 4,000 EUR, Unit will sell you a kit that transforms your GS from a confused styling mess into an R80GS replica.

Fans of the GS will know that the R80GS was possibly the original adventure touring bike.  In the early Eighties, BMW packed their reliable 798cc flat-twin lump into a new frame and drizzled the bike with off-road goodness, creating a whole new market.  Sure, dual purpose off-road/street bikes had been done before but not to this scale.  Within a few years, every manufacturer you can think of had an adventure bike in their lineup.  Thirty years on, the adventure market is one of motorcycling's largest.

What's nice about the R80GS' styling is its simplicity.  It had one round headlamp, a gas tank and a seat.  That's it.  There is only one front fender and no weird plastic thing hugging the rear wheel.  Better yet, the R80GS as a whole was simple.  It wasn't swimming in electronics like the new version.  It even still had carbs.  The bike was simple and that's what's important if you're going to build a bike intended to go where the road ends.

And Unit's kit captures this simplicity with stunning grace.  Leave it up the Italians to take something ugly and make it beautiful.  Everything that makes the new GS look like an ugly wart is replaced.  In its place is the stylistic simplicity that helped make the original GS such a ground-breaker. 

I think it's just fantastic.

This is a standard R1200GS Adventure and it looks terrible.  It looks like it weighs five million pounds and was designed by a group of people not in contact with each other.  

And this is the same bike with Unit Garage's replica kit on it.  As you can see, it looks much better.  All the function of the GS is retained but it's covered in a more-appealing shell.  My only complaint is that the front still looks like a plague doctor's outfit.  Options such as a Paris-Dakar-style flyscreen can be chosen and you can opt to retain the low front fender and lose the beak.  The weird plastic piece behind the rear wheel is still there, though.