Historic BMW highlights on two wheels

 

BMW's 90th Birthday is in 2013

BMW Motorrad's 90th birthday this year make it doubly appropriate that a selection of extraordinary BMW motorcycles should join the field for the Barry Sheene Memorial Trophy at the ongoing Goodwood Revival. The entrants are two Kaczor BMWs, a BMW RS 54 and a BMW RS 500 factory racing machine. In the 1960s, racer and later BMW engineer Ferdinand Kaczor built a 500cc racing boxer machine, whose 50 hp made it roughly twice as powerful as its standard production sibling. And thanks to a self-constructed and extremely lightweight double-cradle frame, it weighed under 150 kilograms.

Kaczor rode the bike to a new lap record of the Nürburgring-Nordschleife circuit in 1969. The two Kaczor BMWs are piloted by Mike Farrell and Sebastian Gutsch and the winners of last year's FIM Superstock 1000 title Sylvain Barrier and Lothar Singer.

In 1954 the BMW RS 54, manned by Wolfgang Maier and Claus Clausen, was the first racing machine for solo and sidecar competition to go on general sale. Its legendary flat-twin boxer engine with vertical shaft drive powered BMW machines to 19 riders' and 20 manufacturers' titles in the sidecar world championship in the years up to 1974.

The BMW RS 500 of 1956, meanwhile, was a factory version of the RS 54, which Walter Zeller rode to second place in the solo world championship the same year. This machine offered the public an early demonstration of the groundbreaking torque support on the rear wheel which preceded BMW's Paralever construction, and is piloted at Goodwood by the all-female pairing of Maria Castello and Fabienne Hoffmann.

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