As great as the new BMW liquid-cooled flat twin engines are, a lot of Beemer Geeks still long for the old days, with simple air-cooled or air/oil-cooled engines, and a more stripped-down chassis. Those days are gone, though—right?
Maybe not. According to Euro moto-magazine Motorrad, we may be about to see a new air-cooled BMW GS. They’re basing this suggestion off two things: First, they got spy pics of such a machine three years ago, in 2021. Then, this month, they sat down with BMW’s big boss and he seemed to admit that such a bike is in the pipeline.
As Google Translate’s take on the Motorrad article says:
What Markus Flasch basically confirmed in the interview in March 2024, MOTORRAD probably already had in front of its lens in the summer of 2021: an enduro with an air-cooled boxer , 21 inch (53.34 cm) front wheel and – known since the presentation of the new R 12 nineT – a new framework. Overall, significantly more HP2 Enduro than Urban G/S, and these were the last two reduced Boxer concepts as Enduro. In 2021 it was a spy with no specific reference, today it is a more or less confirmed new model.
Interesting. If you see Motorrad’s original pic (see the article and the photo here), it does indeed look like a much more dirt-worthy take on the GS formula than the air/oil-cooled R nineT Urban G/S (see Jeff Wilson’s review of that bike here). The Urban G/S was a road-ready scrambler, but the new bike, if it appears in production in the same form as that Motorrad article, will be a proper off-roader.
Expect the new GS to be powered by the same engine as the R12 and R12 nineT. Those bikes are new to Canada for 2024; see the details here.
