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Michael van der Mark Leaving Yamaha WorldSBK at the End of 2020

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Yamaha has announced that Michael van der Mark will be leaving their WorldSBK team at the end of the 2020 WorldSBK season. After what will be four seasons with the Pata Yamaha squad, the 27-year-old Dutchman has decided to leave for pastures new.

There is as yet no confirmation of where Van der Mark is heading, but reports on Speedweek suggest his destination is likely to be BMW.

With Kawasaki already having signed Alex Lowes and Jonathan Rea, and little interest from either Ducati or Honda, BMW is the obvious choice.

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Bikes

The BMW R18 Cruiser Is Finally, Finally Here

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Alas, the long wait is over, as BMW Motorrad has finally shown us the production version of its much-hyped cruiser model, the BMW R18.

Featuring the largest boxer engine ever produced by the German brand, the BMW R18 boasts an 1,802cc displacement for its two horizontally opposed cylinders.

As was teased, peak power is a paltry 90hp (67 kW), but the real attention-getter is the torque curve: 116 lbs•ft (158 Nm).

That peak torque figure hits at just a mere 3,000 rpm, but the BMW R18 churns out at least 110 lbs•ft (150 Nm) all the way from 2,000 rpm to 4,000 rpm, making for a nice broad power band to play with on the open road.

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Recall

BMW Is Recalling A Bevy of Models for Faulty Brake Lights

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It would perhaps be easier to list which models BMW Motorrad USA is not recalling today with NHTSA, as many of the brands newer motorcycles fall afoul of the vehicle code pertaining to rear brake light operation.

Nevertheless we will give it a go, as the following bikes (4,026 units in total) are being recalled for failing to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) number 108, “Lamps, Reflective Devices, and Associated Equipment”:

BMW F900R, BMW F900XR, BMW S1000RR, BMW F750GS, BMW F850GS, BMW F850GS Adventure, BMW R1250GS, BMW R1250GS Adventure, BMW R1250RS, BMW R1250R, BMW RnineT, BMW RnineT Pure, and BMW RnineT Scrambler from the 2020 model year. The 2019-2020 BMW S1000R motorcycles are also affected by this recall.

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Bikes

BMW R18 Cruiser Will Finally Debut on April 3rd

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If you like your motorcycles big, feet-forward, and German, then we have good news for you, as the BMW R18 finally has a release date: Friday, April 3rd.

That’s good news to our ears too, as BMW Motorrad has been teasing the R18 for more than a year with an onslaught of custom and concept motorcycles that feature the big 1,800cc boxer engine.

Expected to come as a platform of machines, we know to expect a model that is very similar to the BMW R18/2 concept we saw debut at EICMA last year.

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WSBK

WorldSBK Releases Rev Limits for the 2020 Season

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To balance performance and make the championship more interesting, the rule makers at the WorldSBK series set maximum rev limits for all the entered bikes at the beginning of the season.

This usually isn’t much of a newsworthy event, but with the recent crop of superbikes hitting stratospheric numbers in their homologated street form, it is causing some interesting issues in the WorldSBK Championship.

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News

BMW Motorrad Sets All-Time Sales Record for 2019

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Good news from the Bavarians, as BMW Motorrad reports that 2019 was the company’s best sales year…ever (again).

According to the German company’s tallies, BMW Motorrad sold 175,162 motorcycles and scooters last year, a bump of 5.8% over the figures from 2018 (165,566 units).

As expected, Germany remains the primary market for BMW Motorrad, with 26,292 units sold last year (up 10.4% from 2018). Crunching the math further, Germany accounts for roughly 15% of BMW’s two-wheeled sales.

The rest of Europe was strong for BMW Motorrad as well, with the European market up 7% overall for BMW – France (17,300 units), Italy (15,580 units), Spain (12,607 units) and the Great Britain/Ireland (9,611 units).

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News

BMW Patents Novel Way to Charge Electric Motorcycles

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The question around electric motorcycles does not seem to be “if” they will come but “when” they will come, and from that comes a slew of other questions on how we are going to handle mainstream adoption of this budding two-wheeled segment.

From this momentum comes ideas on how best to charge electric vehicles, and we already see the great debate about the various charging standards available to manufacturers. 

BMW Motorrad is tackling the issue was well, and patent applications show that the German brand has a very smart solution for how to charge motorcycles.

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Bikes

BMW R18 Boxer Engine Specs Revealed with an Impressive 90hp

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Though few details we given at this year’s EICMA show, we were thankful that we get to look forward to another year of BMW Motorrad hyping its upcoming air-cooled lineup of cruiser-styled motorcycles, which are known as the BMW R18 family.

That is right, the fun isn’t over, and surely the German motorcycle brand will delight us at least one more time with another concept machine that shows off its 1,800cc air-cooled boxer engine, and all of its massive glory.

Until then though, BMW Motorrad has decided to tease out the engine’s very impressive technical specifications, in an effort to appease the countless number of fans who are eagerly awaiting this motorcycle.

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A&R Pro

The Bavarian’s “OK Boomer” Moment, The BMW R18/2

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If you had asked me before the 2019 EICMA show what bike I was most-certain to see debuting for production from BMW Motorrad, the answer surely would have been the BMW R18 cruiser. 

The German brand has been teasing this new machine for an inordinate amount of time (since well before the last EICMA show), bringing a bevy of concept bikes to realization in the process to help ease us into the idea of a big air-cooled, pushrod, boxer engine design with an eye on the cruiser scene.

Surely at Milan, we would see the R18 make its debut, and surely were we disappointed when BMW showed us yet another concept for the motorcycle. It is as if no one learned from Yamaha's mistake with the Ténéré 700.

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Bikes

The BMW F900XR Is Set to Take on the Middleweight Adventure-Sport Market

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One of BMW Motorrad’s big reveals for the 2019 EICMA show in Milan, the BMW F900XR brings two big announcements with it.

First, there is the obvious middleweight addition to the XR “adventure-sport” lineup, and second that the German’s 270° parallel-twin will see a 895cc displacement for the Euro5 homologation.

Riffing on the BMW 9cento concept that we saw a year-and-a-half ago, the 2020 BMW F900XR keeps many of the concept’s lines, while infusing more of its bigger sibling into the design as well.

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