Civic-Roger

It wasn't supposed to go like this. To say BMW's 2009 announcement that it was building a 1,000-cubic-centimetre superbike was greeted with skepticism is a little like saying Greek hairdressers are spoiled (they are eligible to retire at 50 because the chemicals - yes, hydrogen peroxide and bleach - are so dangerous).

You've captured the concept but not the depth of the sneers that greet their respective pleas for respect.

BMW, after all, really was your dad's Buick. Even with its (finally) adoption of my-Godwe're-almost-up-to-date doubleoverhead camshafts, it was best known for its oddly shaped, even more oddly performing flattwins, surely the fuddy-duddiest of internal-combustion engines.

Even when BMW threatened to unleash its purloined-from-thecar-side Formula One technology, motorcycling's orthodoxy wasn't worried. Had they not seen this before with Petronas almost-stillborn FP1 and Aprilia's occasionally rapid but more often floundering Cube? All that high-tech stuff was just poncy, went the establishment's refrain. Perhaps more powerful in the dyno room, but out in the real world of motorcycle racing, all that F1 theory was just so much eggheadedness.

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/technol...#ixzz1cln6DQ9O