Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

IIN~'s ~IOO A 'lJ.fI tiJlle tomJfI By Dev Dvoretsky When Austrian engineer Stefan Pachernegg joined the board of BMW Motorrad GmbH in March 1981 as director of product development, he found a very disjointed engineering team. Fresh from working with Steyr-Puch in the development of the Daimler-Benz four wheel Itt drive G-Wagon, he found the motorcycle engineering team all doing great work individually but communication of ideas wi th other departments working on the KIOO series project was almost non-existent. The team had built several engines and designed several bikes, but there was no one to take overall responsibility to help further their e££orts. The team comprised less than 50 at the time. They were depressed and felt they 'had nowhere to go. Their ideas had been caught up in the history of BMW over the previous 10 years, during which most of the company's e££orls had gone into building up the car range. It was a history of lillie money, little dire<;tion but plenty of ideas. In .fact, as Pachernegg tells the story today, the initial idea for the KIOO goes back to·1973. The motorcycle engineers in those days decided to make the Boxer twin into a four cylinder of 1000cc. This engine, a water-cooled Boxer four. was to have a development potential of up to 1300cc and was built to prototype stage before the introduction of the Honda GUOOO Gold Wing. The BMW team, such as it was in those days, had already scented what was to happen in the motorcycle industry worldwide. By the time the Gold Wing was introduced, they had 'already built several prototypes of the horizontally-opposed four and had also built a revised IOOOcc Boxertwin with overhead camshafts. This was ruled out because of its weight, and cooling problems with the cylinders. These were the days of the first exhaust and ~oise emission legislation that meant if engineers wanted high performance, they had to design a highly e££icient combustion chamber. Water-cooling was desirable to maintain even running temperature and reduce mechanical noise. The company built a prototype but found that, like the Gold Wing introduced by Honda while BMW was still working on the project, the cylinders stuck out too far on each side for anything but straight-line touring: On top of that, the engine was complicated and would be expensive to produce. The design was abandoned. Then came the idea to build an in-line engine. The first prototype was a lOOOcc triple inclined horizontall y and designed to become a four of 1300cc. At, that time, the thinking was still 'super' bikes and the need for luxury motorcycles or that size. The next question was to decide between the three cylinder 1000 with its relatively large pistons and a similarly sized rour with less piston mass. At the time, Yamaha's shaft drive 750 triple wasn't making much of an impression on the market, so the BMW team opted ror a lOOOcc rour - which also allowed the possibility or down-sizing. A 1000cc engine was the largest capacity they wanted and this is the philosophy that has remained. By the time Pachernegg arrived they had built several engines but nothing was really happening. "There were three steps in the sudden turnaround of the Rand 0 department," the Austrian engineer explains. "FirsLOur chairman, Dr. Eberhard Sar£ert, and our marketing manager, Karl Gerlinger, got together and decided something had to be done, and done quickly. "They looked at the market, they made bige££orts with our dealerships. Their next step was to clean up the Spandau factory in West Berlin and get it ready for production. "At that time," says Pachernegg, "there was a good development team with good ideas but one which never collaborated. No one took responsibility. There were people from the car department, people from the engine department. But at the end of the day they would need another decision, a signal to go on. "In every development you have stages. The first is the prototype and our first prototype looked very ugl y. Then in came the marketing people who say 'we don't like this'. Then you need another decision. How does , ..

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