Annual reports from listed bike firms are generally a bit of a snore-fest, but there is the occasional nugget of interest contained within them. The BMW group report landed a few weeks ago, and in amongst all the chat about pre- and post-tax return on sales, return on capital employed (RoCE), fair value hedges and asset-backed financing transactions, was this cheeky little paragraph:
R nineT family now complete
BMW Motorrad completed the R nineT product family line-up in 2017 with the launch of the R nineT Pure, R nineT Racer and R nineT Urban G / S models.
Which seems to suggest that the Munich Massive is all done with them retro feels man, and is switching its two-wheeled attentions elsewhere. With that sector being swamped by ‘undreds of Ducati and Triumph scramblers, plus Yamaha XSRs and all the rest of it, maybe they can see the end of the retro boom.
On the other hand, of course, it might just be a throwaway line put into a massive document by a bored accountant who wouldn’t know an RnineT Racer from an S1000RR racebike. We’ll no doubt find out more at the new bike launches this autumn…
Download the report for some light lunchtime reading here.
