Have the crazy Germans come up trumps with an entertaining, oddball parts bin special? BMW's K1200R Sport has arrived
It's barely spring and BMW has had a busy year already. First a new family of funky single-cylinder 650s - the G-series - and now, at the other end of the performance scale, we get this, the K1200R Sport.
BMW's latest K-series inline four is refreshingly indefinable. Is it a naked bike with half a fairing added, or a sports bike with half the fairing taken away? And does it matter?
Ask BMW and they say the K1200R Sport is a naked K1200R with a top fairing, seemingly one nicked from an R1200S. It works a treat too, both functionally and aesthetically, but could do with the R1200S's fairing mounted mirrors, not the bar-mounted ones it's stuck with. Everything else is either/or K1200S and/or R, including the motor, although the Sport felt much healthier in the low and midrange than the last naked R I rode. Maybe the optional Laser performance can was adding to the fluid, elastic delivery and gushing top end. BMW claim 163bhp - perhaps a tad optimistic, 140 or so feels nearer the mark.
All you really need to know is this is a serious, grown-up, hairy-arsed fast motorcycle. Good-oh.
The Duolever/Paralever set-up is predictably odd. On the one hand it's compliant and responsive, with a smooth, floating sensation over most surfaces. But hit a cat's eye or small pothole and the Duolever's forks, or prongs, or whatever they are, jar like they're locked solid. At other times it's hard to tell what's going on at all. Either that or they're so good at absorbing bumps you don't feel them.
Maybe that's the same thing. Whatever, you have to get used to a certain detachment from the road surface before the clever suspensions' benefits - such as granite boulder-like stability - can be enjoyed. And it can be enjoyed. Steering is slow and heavy (there's a steering damper in there somewhere) but at least it's accurate.
Continue the 2007 BMW K1200R Sport Review
