So, I was chatting with Ted Porter last week and we got on a subject that apparently drives him as wild as it does me. So I thought I'd address it here:

BMW is the spawn of the Devil.

BMW is the most underappreciated company in motorcycling.

This has to do with BMW and how people perceive them with regards to their Airhead or Vintage BMW bikes.

BMW as Devil

If you've ever been in the presence of a group of strident Airhead Beemer Club members, you know a couple things: there has never been, and never will be again, a better bike; and, BMW is conspiring to do anything at all that will make the Airhead's life more difficult and expensive, and to shorten the working life of the airhead bikes.

BMW tried to kill off the airheads, not once, but twice. The first time was when they brought out those water cooled, inline four K Bikes that are nearly Japanese in layout, styling and character (or lack of it). When that didn't work, they designed the "New Boxer" which has come to be known as the oilhead (for its second oil pump dedicated to moving a cooling flow of oil around the exhaust valve area in the head, and, at the same time, caused the post hoc creation of the airhead moniker). This was equipped with electronic engine management, ABS brakes and other incomprehensable things that make it essentially impossible to work on if something should fail and expensive to buy parts.

BMW has gradually been removing support for airhead bikes. Most shops don't stock regular parts and won't work on airheads. Even some of the better shops have stopped taking "points bikes". The owners, no matter how removed from actual wrenching, are becoming more knowledgable and able to effect maintenance and repairs than the dealers, whose mechanics know less and less about them.

So it's a very good thing that these bikes, designed back before BMW was ruled by the bean counters, are extremely maintenance friendly. Unfortunately, BMW keeps on jacking up the prices of the parts. And while the prices of maintenance items like filters have gone up, the cost of replacement parts has skyrocketed! In fact, even simple nuts and bolts recently took a big jump!

BMW as Angel

First of all, the very newest airhead bikes are pushing 15 years old. Have you tried going into a dealership for any other motorcycle brand and asking for parts for a 15 year old model, let alone one that is almost 40 years old? They can't remember that far back. These bikes are truly becoming vintage vehicles.

Even if a dealer doesn't have the part you need in stock, they can order nearly anything. If you are travelling and your airhead develops a problem, any dealer should be able to "VOR" (vehicle off road) the part for a surprisingly small surcharge and, if it's in the US, get it the next day.

BMW, at least as of a couple years ago, still offered a 2 day factory school covering airheads. Why would they do that? You may well say that a mechanic can't learn all that there is to know about an airhead in 2 weeks, let alone two days — and that is true. But none of the other manufacturers is offering classes for anything but their very newest models. BMW is going far out of their way to continue to support their older models.

The reason why dealers don't want to take on airhead jobs, even just routine maintenance, may have little to do with training anyway. Older bikes, even those that are well maintained, can have "issues". This is highly compounded for bikes with less than a perfect provenance. A typical airhead bike has a market value in the $2500 - $6000 range, depending on the model and condition, of course. Especially at the lower end, it's easy to start finding problems that, if repaired, will swamp the value of the bike. Things like warped rotors, worn transmission input splines and wheel hub splines, stripped header nut threads and so on are multiple hundred dollar problems. A dealer won't find these until they are in the middle of a "tune up", and it may not be safe to put it back together as is. And when the dealer calls the owner and says that the $300 estimate just ballooned to $2000, the dealer may end up stuck with the bike.

As far as the expense of parts goes, today a US dollar is worth 70 euro cents. Even eight years ago, the greenback was worth €1.18 — it's only worth 3/5ths what it once was. In addition, the parts for the older bikes must be stored somewhere, and that costs money, too. You're not just buying new harvest beaujelais here, but 25 year old vintage port.

In other words, the parts and supply is only available because BMW does care about these old bikes, even though they do not stand to make much money from them ever again.

Postscript

Of course, the real truth is somewhere in between. BMW stands to burnish their reputation for solid products and support by putting in the effort they do. The word of mouth value is worth a lot more than what can be bought with advertising. And perhaps someone with an old bike will, themselves, occasionally buy a new one, too.

BMW is a for-profit company that must answer to its shareholders. They are not a charity that exists to support old bikes. The fact that they somehow feel that parts availability for 40 year old models is worthwhile is pretty much astounding. If there are some parts that have been superseded or are simply NLA, it's not really that big a surprise, is it?