R18 Competes With American V Twin Market / NEW BMW Ride & Review

Alright y'all, I want you to look at something. Look at that beautiful engine right next to me. It's the BMW R18. It's, I think personally, a square attack at the American V-Twin market, and in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly why and what I thought riding this thing down the coast of Florida. It is the R18. It is a BMW, but it's not what you'd expect to find on a BMW. I'm out here in Florida. I picked up this new BMW to give it a ride and a little review from y'all. I am at Sky Motorsports here in Sanford, Florida, and let me tell you, their showroom is jam-packed with all kinds of rad brands of motorcycles. They are not having a supply shortage here. Take a look. Okay, so back to the BMW R18. Listen, this bike, I had fun riding it. It was fun to just get on and cruise. It is a unique motorcycle, and in this video, I'm going to tell you all the things I love about this bike and the things I don't like about this bike. I'm going to give you an American V-Twin rider's perspective on BMW's cruiser motorcycle. I'm not going to give you too many stats on the bike because, well, y'all can look that up online just as easy as anybody else. It's all the information's there, but what I am going to do is tell you my opinions, what I noticed. Let's just start with the look of the bike, okay? I think this is a square attack at American-made V-Twin motorcycles, primarily Harley-Davidson by the design and look of this motorcycle. It has got a classic cruiser line to it. It looks like you'd expect an American cruiser to look. Of course, that's with the exception of that boxer engine. That is the largest boxer engine they have ever put in a motorcycle. It's 110 cubic inches. For those of you who like to judge your motorcycles in cubic inches, but the horsepower it puts out is comparable to the 114 Milwaukee 8 Harley-Davidson has on the market, and it even produces maybe a little bit more torque than that. Size-wise, it's probably closer to a Heritage than a Road King, but weighs about 150 pounds more than the Heritage, okay? So, it's not a light motorcycle. This is a heavy motorcycle any way you look at it, but I don't think performance was the main objective for BMW here. In my opinion, their main objective was to make something nostalgic and something beautiful, to make a piece of art, and to be honest, that's really what old-school American V-Twin motorcycles were. They were so much art. They were never the fastest or the best riding or the best cornering. They were always beautiful. They always had more soul than they did performance, and I think that's what I find on this motorcycle. It's more about the soul than it is the performance, and I'll get into some of the performance things that I don't like here in this video towards the end, but what I do like is the design, is the feature, is that soul I spoke of. Look at these fork tubes, these big huge bell housings that come all the way down. It's just beautiful, kind of classic, timeless looking. Even the tops are so well made. They're just gorgeous. You know, it just looks like little machine parts on there, and that translates over into like the gas cap and the double pin striping that's so classic and timeless that we find the the spoked wheels with the fat tires. True Brembo brakes, but branded BMW. Oil cooler down front, but back to cool factors, we're talking this exposed driveshaft. When you're going down the road and that thing's just spinning, man that's just a beautiful thing, and that's timeless, right? That's old school. That's kind of a throwback, which is kind of the feel of this whole motorcycle. The oval shaped tank goes with that old classic feel. The way the seat lays in, the fender, even the exhaust. Your risers, your gauge, all of these things to me speak nostalgia. They speak timeless. They speak soul. I don't know any better way to put it, and that's truly what I felt going down the road on this motorcycle. I felt the soul. I felt the timeless. You know, I recently took a trip with a bunch of 30s and 40s motorcycles across the country, and you weren't winning any races. You weren't drag racing your buddies, but you felt, you know, cool. The guys look cool going down the road. It was more of a feeling, right? And like I said, I think that's more of what motorcycling used to be back in the day. Right now, performance is such a hot thing, but a lot of us still just want the soul. We want the heart. We want the beauty of the motorcycle, and that's how I felt riding this along the coast. I was going down alongside the ocean, and I could just feel, it felt timeless. It felt cool. Being a smooth operator can be every bit as cool as being the fastest guy on the track, and this bike brings that to life. One of the coolest cool factors of this bike is when you start it, because what happens is that big engine starts going side-by-side. It starts pulling those handlebars side-by-side, and you can feel it, you know, in the bike, and it's just cool. It gives you, like I said, just kind of that throwback, muscly feel. You start this thing, watch what happens to these handlebars. See that? It's just jerking them. You can actually feel this engine pulling from side to side, and you can do that at all low RPMs when you're on the road, and as soon as you give it some throttle, it starts to really just smooth out. No more jerking. Before you let off that throttle at the stoplight, it just puts a smile on my face. So while everybody else is chasing performance, BMW said, let's make a motorcycle that speaks to riders with soul, and that's exactly what you're going to get here. Guys, this is not going to be a canyon ripper for a couple of reasons, and this is where I'm going to get into a couple of things I really don't like about the motorcycle. Not that it would stop me from adding this to a stable, because this thing, honestly, you guys riding this thing felt like I was riding a piece of art. It's a feeling that no adrenaline rush could give you. It's a completely different experience, and a completely different enjoyment factor. The RPMs on this thing are low. It's got a lot of torque down low. It'll pull you hard up hills, into corners, but in the higher RPMs, it did get a bit vibratey, and a little bit less enjoyable, and less nostalgic to ride. The rear suspension only has about three and a half inches of travel. That is not a lot of travel for a bike that's made to cruise. That's not a lot of travel for comfort, or for a highway. It is a whole inch more than the two, two and a half inches you're getting out of the new Sportster S everybody's reviewing, but this bike's a different beast altogether, but it's still not enough to be doing big, huge, touring, full-time, long-distance road trips. This is more of a get on it, ride up to the local restaurant, or tavern, or town, or roadside attraction, or whatever your motorcycle destination may be. You get on this, you go there, and you pull up in style. Other things I found issues with was the placement of the floorboards and controls. The rear brake and that jug made it a little bit difficult for my foot. I often caught myself looking down to make sure I was getting exactly where I needed to be. Same thing when it came to shifting this bike. When it came to shifting this bike, I had troubles with the downshifting because there just wasn't a lot of room in there for my foot. Luckily, it's got the heel shifter that made it easy for going up gears, but difficult foot position with this big boxer engine up front. Speaking of the floorboards and the foot controls, another thing that I did notice is the lean angle on this wasn't that great. I found myself dragging my feet and floorboards a lot sooner than I would have liked to, but like I said, this is a piece of beauty, not a canyon ripper. I'm sure you get comfortable to it and used to it. Even towards the end, I had less trouble with it, but definitely not the easiest for foot placement. Another thing, it's a heavy motorcycle. Like I said, if you compare it against the Heritage Softtail, you're over 100 pounds heavier on this bike, but there's some benefits, like it's low engine and low seat height. If you're a shorter rider, this bike is going to be beautiful for cruising. It literally has a lower seat height than the Honda Grom. Only 27 inches for that seat height. That's super low. It is air cooled, and with those big vents stuck out into the wind, it's going to catch a lot of air, and it also has an oil cooler down below to help it cool, and although it's catching all that wind, it was still kind of warm on my feet up front here in the 100 degree Florida weather, but y'all, that's really it. I mean, for the things I didn't like about it, maybe it could use some bigger suspension, you know, maybe it could be a maybe it could have better foot control and pegs for riding long distance, but at the end of the day, it's not what this motorcycle is. This motorcycle is a piece of art, and it's not just that I think it's a work of art. It actually comes with a souvenir box, if you will, with letters to the dealer in English and in German, along with some medallions and hats and a book, and this is really a collector's piece. It's a beautiful thing. When you're riding down the road on this thing, it's like being James Dean in 2021. It's a cool factor, it's a feel, and it's exciting, and I think more motorcycle brands should be going after it, and I think BMW's on to it. So, will it be BMW's biggest selling motorcycle? I think not, and is it what you expect from a BMW? Precision, performance? No, I don't think it is. I think it's a very comfortable motorcycle to cruise, and I think if you want to ride a motorcycle to feel good, this is exactly the type of motorcycle that can do that for you. Like I said, I'm not going to give you all the stats. Y'all can look those up anywhere. In fact, I'll even link down below to some of the stats. You can click the link if you want to read them out. To me, this video is more about my impression riding it, looking at the beautiful bent tube framing, the driveshaft, the gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous engine, the design, the features, and the fact that BMW has taken a step towards what I consider competing in the American V-Twin market. It's a cruiser. It's not American, but it kind of looks it, but then again, it doesn't. I think it's a wonderful motorcycle. It is the new R18 from BMW. It is a throwback. It is nostalgia, and it's a feel-good motorcycle. If you get the chance, you should put your legs over and maybe even add to your garage. Alright y'all, I hope you enjoyed this video. It was a little bit out of my normal wheelhouse, but y'all, I love all motorcycles, and this just reminded me of that, and maybe it gets you thinking about it too. In today's market, there's so many beautiful motorcycles out there, and this, my friends, is certainly one of them. I'll see y'all in tomorrow's video, and until then, just stay stubborn.