BOULEVARD Boxer

Unlikely as it may seem nowadays, given how its Boxer twins and especially its R1250GS cash cow continue to underpin BMW Motorrad’s profitability as it closes in on selling over 200,000 motorcycles in a single year, in the early-80s after the debut of the four-cylinder K100 ‘Flying Brick’in 1983, serious consideration was given by BMW AG top management to killing off the German marque’s trademark model, and allowing the Boxer range to die a peaceful death.

The September 1992 debut at the Cologne Show of the all-new R1100RS with its air / oil-cooled 1085cc fuel-injected, high-cam, flat-twin R259 motor put paid publicly to that notion – but it had meantime been left throughout the 1980s to the myriad specialist manufacturers then existing in Germany to satisfy the demand of Boxer enthusiasts for updated versions of the Munich firm’s legendary flat-twin models. This was despite the ever more stringent TiiV homologation regulations limiting permissible modifications to production road bikes. These meant smaller manufacturers were faced with the daunting and costly requirement of obtaining TuV approval for any small volume model it chose to build. Britain’s more rational and far less costly SVA approval scheme never existed in Germany.

S+S Motorrad Design spearheaded by Dirk Schade was one such manufacturer, and in 1989 it made a short series of sports bikes which originally started out as just another special. But after