#RNinetRacer

BMW announced it will reveal five new motorcycles on Oct. 22 at noon EST/9 am PST across its social media channels. BMW only offered two clues about the five models: they will all be what BMW calls its “Heritage world”, and at least one will be an R18 model based on the engine photo accompanying the news.

Part one of BMW R NineT Racer: Getting the Boxer in Shape for Battle focused on assembling a two-rider team made up of retired road racer/team owner and BMW dealership owner Gary Orr. Rider number two was MO videographer/veteran of exactly one road race in 2014 – Your’s Truly. Additional technical, logistical, and financial support was provided from Osh Minelian and Mike Ngo. Osh owns Oshmo Motorworks – a BMW service and hop-up shop. Mike is the man with a dream of reviving a spec Boxer series in America and all around Boxer fanboy.

“Yo Sean! What do you think about racing a BMW R nineT and making a video about it?” I hadn’t heard from my old friend Mike Ngo for a couple of years, but he was still as straight to point as ever. I countered, “What no dinner, drinks, and maybe a movie first? This doesn’t include me buying your R nineT does it Mike?”

BMW released information on some models that will be returning with minor updates for 2019. For the most part, the changes consist of new color schemes and improved self-cancelling turn signals as standard on some models. Others, such as dynamic brake lights as standard on R nineT models, aren’t allowed in the U.S.

One could take two approaches to understanding what BMW has done to the R nineT to give us the 2017 BMW R nineT Racer. The glass half-empty crowd will talk about the components that fell away to help keep the Racer’s price down. The glass half-full perspective would stress the cool new additions to the platform that resulted in the Racer.

I was a little surprised my kid liked the new Honda Rebel 500 as much as he did last week, but then all of us are surprised by our offspring, aren’t we? His daily driver lately is my old Yamaha R1. He finally got around to getting his motorcycle endorsement last month – on our borrowed KTM Super Duke GT… so he does have quite a varied motorcycle background for a kid who’s only 23 years old. In an effort to understand the younger moto-mentality, and as a service to all the manufacturers trying to figure out what the hell millennial motorcyclists want, anyway, I drilled further into my child’s mind to get down to the Top 10 of things.

BMW‘s R NineT will be joined by three variants next year including the R NineT Scrambler that debuted last fall at EICMA. BMW had previously confirmed the Scrambler will join the R NineT in dealerships in the third quarter but a new executive order published by the California Air Resources Board, BMW has received certification for two more variants: the R NineT Pure and the R NineT Racer.