It's not every day BMW release a new bike, and even less often when it's a bike that will compete with Japan and Italy's finest superbikes. Today BMW announced that in 2009 they will be entering the Superbike market with their new inline-four based WSB racer, the S 1000 RR.
In typical BMW style, the language used is confusing, with them announcing the entrance of BMW into the Supersport market. Supersport? That's 600's, come-on BMW, get with the rest of us. We're talking 1000cc superbike here. Still, they know they've got a huge challenge one their hands, admitting they're 20 years behind the Japanese in superbike development, but they're eager to expand their range and take on the might of the Japanese.
Along with the launch of the S 1000 RR next year, they also plan to compete the World Superbikes SBK class, which is a huge effort and risk considering the bike will be developed whilst raced. Most other factories will launch and for one year race-develop the bike in lower visibility races such as Superstock classes, giving some lucky privateer team the benefit of a factory backed support package. To launch and race on the same day is tempting fate we think, but BMW aren't new to racing, so there's every chance they will do well. They're aiming for consistent top-ten finishes. Hrm. They can't do any worse than Foggy Petronas racing, can they?
BMW are keeping tight-lipped over the specifications for the S 1000 RR, letting our imagination do the work, though we do know it follows a very typical 1000cc inline-four engine, twin-spar and a bolt-on sub-frame model. To you and I it may well look like it has a little something from all four Japanese factories in it. I know I can certainly spot some heavy influence from Kawasaki, Suzuki and even some Aprilia (RSV-4) in it.
The bad news though is that BMW are only aiming to meet WSB homologation minimum build numbers, which is 1000 by the end of 2009. Bummer.We'll find out more in the coming months, but for now we'll just have to oogle at the hi-def pictures and speculate over the cost. If we were to guess, we'd say £15k+ if they keep it near to race-trim.
Teaser Video (sound at end):
Updated:
Because we couldn't resist the temptation when presented with such a beautifully blank canvas, we've done a mock-up of what the bike might look like if we were running Team LB in the WSB series with the S 1000 RR. You can see it as the last picture in the hi-res slideshow above. Here's a preview:
