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As we saw with the Ducati Motor Holding’s sales report from earlier today, 2020 was an obviously tough year for the motorcycle industry, and that trend continues with the BMW Motorrad’s results for the year.

In its preliminary report on the BMW Group’s annual sales, the German brand quotes that it sold 169,272 motorcycles and scooters to customers in 2020.

Despite BMW Motorrad spinning this as its second-best sales year ever, this number of bikes sold is a 3.4% drop compared to 2019’s sales volume, and it is the first time in nine years that sales for BMW Motorrad have not grown.

2020 continues to be a tough year for motorcycle sales, though it comes with the silver lining that brands have seen a strong summer and early fall in terms of customers buying bikes.

Today, we see early sales numbers from BMW Motorrad typifying that trend, as the German brand is reporting big gains for Q3 2020, to the tune of 20.9% (52,892 units sold to customers).

That good news is tempered by the bigger picture though, as BMW Motorrad is still off the mark for the year so far, having sold only 129,599 motorcycles in the first nine months of 2020 – a 5.4% drop compared to this time last year.

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.

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).

When you think of race bikes to use for battle on the race track, an old air-cooled BMW boxer twin is probably not the machine your mind immediately lands upon. Though, custom builder Scott Kolb is making a strong case to change that opinion.

This is because his latest creation is a 310 lbs purpose-built racing machine, with 82hp on tap for good measure.

Built around a 1976 BMW R90/6 boxer-twin engine, this blend of something new and something old would certainly be potent – and legal – in most lightweight club racing classes, and that tickles us in all the right places.

BMW Motorrad has released its yearly figures for 2018, and the report is mostly positive. Sales worldwide were up a very modest 0.9% for the year (165,566 in total unit sales), and this does mean that 2018 was the German company’s eighth year in row of growth.

The news was good for BMW Motorrad USA as well, with the American subsidiary showing a 2.2% bump in sales (13,842 units) compared to 2017, thanks primarily to the company’s introduction of the K1600 Grand America.

BMW Motorrad is very quietly teasing a new motorcycle platform, one that is centered around an 1,800cc boxer design.

BMW teased this new engine in a unique way, having Yuichi Yoshizawa and Yoshikazu Ueda of Custom Works Zon build a show bike around the boxer-twin, which we are showing here in the story.

With its vintage style, it is easy to disregard the prototype engine from BMW as being something from the German company’s past, and perhaps that is the point. The engine uses a push-rod design, and its cooling fins tip-off its air/oil-cooling mechanism.

Specifics  beyond this are non-existent, however, with BMW Motorrad simply saying that “further details about the engine and its possible future use will be communicated at a later point in time.”

Even as the official opening of EICMA rapidly approaches, our Bothan Spies are hard at work looking for clues to next year’s motorcycle debuts. As such, they bring news from Milan, where BMW Motorrad is set to unveil a bevy of new motorcycles.

Most of these new bikes we know of, with the BMW R1250GS Adventure and BMW S1000RR already leaking, and the BMW R1250R and BMW R1250RS obviously tipped by CARB filings for the new ShiftCam boxer-twin engine.

With BMW Motorrad telling us that we will see nine new motorcycles this new bike season, all that is left is simple math on what remains, now that the BMW R1250GS and BMW R1250RT debuted ahead of the INTERMOT show.

So far, our total is six…but we’re about to make it seven, as our Bothan’s report that the BMW F850GS Adventure will debut tomorrow morning in Milan.

One of nine new motorcycles coming from BMW Motorrad for the 2019 model year, the new BMW R1250RT is one of five BMW models getting an updated boxer engine that uses “ShiftCam” variable valve timing (click here to see the BMW R1250GS).

The new engine promises better throttle response when touring and at lower speeds, while still providing a sizable power increase at full throttle, to the tune of 134hp and 92 lbs•ft of torque.

The rest of the BMW R1250RT goes largely unchanged from the previous model, however, though BMW Motorrad has added a few notable enhancements beyond the new boxer engine. Specifically, dynamic traction control (DTC), automatic stability control (ASC), and hill-start control (HSC) are now all standard on the 2019 BMW R1250RT model.

We have known about the 2019 BMW R1250GS for some time now, but today we get our first real look of the machine, thanks to the bike’s promotional video, which has leaked on the internet (hat tip to the folks at Motorcular.com). And, despite everything we knew about the BMW R1250GS, the Germans still managed to surprise us.

This is because instead of the “Shiftcam” technology that BMW Motorrad has developed for its revised boxer engine.

Originally tipped to have variable valve technology, we now see how BMW is going to achieve this goal, and the answer is with a camshaft that has dual lobes and a shift gate that engages the high valve lift set during full throttle applications.