BMW Venting Machine Suit
"..a high level of both active and passive safety, to meet the requirements of a functional motorcycle suit for the summer."
I suppose the name "Venting Machine Suit" translates into something very technical, cute or otherwise marketable-sounding in German, but let's face it, in English it just sounds kind of silly. The suit itself, is serious business - especially if you do much hot weather riding, like I do. BMW calls the design concept "a high level of both active and passive safety, to meet the requirements of a functional motorcycle suit for the summer." What that means is that "actively," the suit provides a high level of ventilation for cooling, thus reducing rider fatigue and increasing concentration on hot weather rides. "Passively," it is designed with special high-strength materials for greater abrasion resistance than most other hot weather suits, together with full, CE-approved body armor inserts, and a high reflectivity factor for night visibility.This is one of a very few riding suits I have ever tried that was almost as comfortable when walking around as it was for riding.
Full mesh summer riding suits have been with us for several years now, and are a real blessing for those of us who do a lot of hot weather riding. However, we all know that to get maximum venting, we have to trade off a fair amount of abrasion resistance. The lighter the mesh, and the larger the holes in the mesh, the more air passage we get. But, in turn, we give away a lot of the fabric's ability to hold together on impact and to resist tarmac abrasions. However, as new materials and new designs have come along, these suits have been getting progressively better and better at providing both protection and comfort. Currently, this new BMW suit seems to stand at the top of that learning curve. Though the venting is not quite as comprehensive as, say, a Joe Rocket Phoenix jacket, where you'd swear you were wearing nothing more substantial than a wet T-shirt, the BMW suit still offers more than adequate ventilation for high temperatures, yet protects you with a heavier, tighter-knit mesh shell, and larger, more complete armor.
Though the jacket only features two outside pockets (I prefer having four), there are also two zippered inside pockets,
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