Rental Review: 2022 BMW R1250RT

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of all the ways to spend twenty-seven grand, this is definitely one of them

Let me give you a reason not to ride motorcycles: given enough time and mileage, you are statistically certain to get hurt — and you can also get crippled on your very first day, there’s no rhyme or reason to it and you’re unlikely to see it coming.

Let me give you a reason to ignore the above: stepping into the bike world is like entering an alt-universe where the manufacturers actually give a shit about corner-case customers and will move both heaven and earth in order to make those customers happy.

It shouldn’t be this way. Motorcycles are far less profitable than cars but not really that much simpler or cheaper to make. Sales volumes are utterly pathetic, particularly among the over-150cc crowd. Without having fingertip access to all the data, but knowing Honda’s internal sales figures over the course of several years, I’d venture to guess that nine out of ten bikes sold worldwide are either scooters or kapchai. The full-sized, hundred-plus-horsepower motorcycle used for leisure purpose is an astoundingly rare phenomenon; the RAM 1500 is more popular globally than all of the grown-up bikes put together.

And yet BMW goes through the trouble of making two completely different platforms for its luxury touring bike. The first one is the almighty K1600, available in bagger, sport-tourer, and full-tourer forms. It’s powered by an inline six and feels faster than my ZX-14R on the road, although in reality it has 160hp to push 789lbs against the Kwacker’s 208 and 580.

BMW always intended for the inline-watercooled K-bikes to replace the oil-cooled flat-twin R-bikes, much in the same way that Porsche had the 928 set up to take the place of the 911 — but when a similar customer outcry happened, BMW just decided to develop both platforms with intense care and devotion. You can think of it as a world in which Porsche sells an air-cooled 911 and a perfected 928 in the year 2022. I like to think of it as when Iron Maiden accepted the return of second guitarist Adrian Smith and then decided, what the hell, let’s keep Janick Gers and have three guitarists, everybody involved is so nice and there’s enough money to go around.

you won’t need a twelve inch screen to tell you when the boxer has had enough

Accordingly, BMW has done three clean-sheet redesigns of its boxer-twin touring bike since the arrival of the K-bikes. This R1250RT is the latest one, producing 136 horsepower to motivate 615 pounds. It’s available in a $20,000 bare-bones(ish) model and a $26,000 premium bike with heated seats, quickshifter, and other fancy equipment.

My Eaglerider bike was a base model with a few options but not the whole Premium Package. Nor did it had either of the upscale “option code” paint packages. It had just over 31,000 miles when I took delivery, and was very insistent that it needed service.

“Don’t worry about it,” the rental guy said. “I’ll fix it when you bring it back. And try to get back an hour early, so I don’t have to stay after close to check it in and prep it.”

“Any other way I could be of service to you?” I inquired, to which he just shrugged.

I’d imagined that I would be able to use the RT the way I’ve used a dozen other motorcycles in Los Angeles, zipping past stopped traffic and maintaining a mild three figures on freeways that were artery-clogged with fat SUVs, but my first attempt to get up to the front of a stoplight line on La Cienega put paid to that misapprehension. The RT is wide. And it is wide down low, too. Somehow it’s even worse than the BMW R18 boxer-cruiser, which was previously #1 on my list of Non-Lane-Splitter Bikes Without “Glide” Or “Wing” In Their Names.

Here in Ohio, this would mean less than nothing — but in California it is crucial, as owning a motorcycle can save you hours in traffic every week, in exchange for a not insignificant risk of getting yeeted off your bike and into the funeral home by an Altima doing 105mph on two compact spares or a stolen Silverado operated by four members of the MS-13 crime syndicate.

both vehicles are metal and plastic incarnations of giving a shit about the customer, however ineptly

BMW takes noise regulations very seriously, so the loudest sound in the R1250RT’s cockpit is the ticking of… the valvetrain. Happily, I’ve ridden BMW press bikes before so I knew the sound doesn’t mean what it would mean on a Japanese inline four — please kill me before I kill myself would be the best way to sum it up. But it does sound, well, just plain broken. In fact, all of the noises you’ll hear on the R1250RT are simply awful, from the clicky-clack of the engine to the tortured way in which the gearbox responds to even the most delicately clutched of shifts. If you want a better-sounding bike than this, you have virtually infinite options all the way down to a Grom. The only way to have a more stupid-sounding bike would be to get a LiveWire.

Unhappy though the engine might sound, it’s frisky enough when you twist the long-travel throttle all the way around to the stop. But “frisky” is all you get, not “frightening”. K1600 acceleration is not on offer here; it’s more like a big-displacement cruiser from Victory or Honda. My 1100cc Yamahas needn’t concern themselves with this Beemer, despite being four decades old. I got flat smoked by a Tesla that didn’t like me sneaking up the bike lane to get next to it at a stoplight; on a ZX-14R or even a Concours 1400 you needn’t suffer such indignities.

The gearbox and clutch are not happy creatures at low speeds; some of that is down to wear but I’ve ridden new BMWs with the same issues. Make sure you ride one before buying, because I’d find this behavior extremely annoying in traffic. While I never stalled the RT, I continually felt that I was at the verge of doing so. Oh: revving the thing like a dipshit at the light can make the whole motorcycle unexpectedly tilt as the horizontal engine picks up momentum. If you use your left foot to hold the bike up at lights, be aware.

The newest R1250RT models have Honda-style linked brakes, only as far as I can tell the linking is the same whether you squeeze the hand lever or slow it down with your foot. You can ride this bike for the rest of your life just using the footbrake; I tried it for a whole run down Laurel Canyon without any ill effects. Of course, when you put this in the garage and get your 1989 ZX-7RR back out, this behavior will get you killed.

I’m not an expert on motorcycle handling but I found the RT to be acceptable for the amount of lean I was gonna give it, which wasn’t much. I’d hoped for a sunny day to run it up Route 33 north of Ojai; instead I found myself riding shiny-slick canyons in rain-soaked Hollywood, which in the Gavin Newsom era are potholed to a fare-thee-well. You can’t go too fast because you need cornering capability in reserve simply to avoid the heaves and holes coming your way at random intervals like Tetris blocks on a championship level.

BMW has yielded to customer preference and shitcanned their unique turn signals in favor of a plain Japanese-style left-hand switch without much tactile feedback. There’s a rotating wheel on the left grip that can be moved left of right as well. Between that and a MENU rocker, you can get to all the features. There are multiple ride modes for “sport” and “rain” and whatnot. You can set up the bike as you like then use one of four quick-access memory buttons to engage all settings at once, from “two-up luggage touring” to “rainy commute”.

The keyless ignition is not nearly as cheap or stupid as what Ducati and a few other exotic bikes use, but I don’t really see the point of it. You still need to hit a “power” button then engage the starter separately. It’s just saving you from, ah, knowing exactly where your keys are at all times? And the gas cap is keyless-entry as well, something I’ve come to genuinely distrust on various new-bike road tests.

its a great bike for someone

Here’s what the R1250RT does well: run down a freeway at 95mph with the windscreen in full-deflection mode. (At six two with short legs, I’m just a bit too short to entirely hide behind it.) The Premium Package bike has active cruise control, apparently. That would really shrink the miles. If that’s why you ride a bike, of course. To shrink the miles.

Since the above-stated use case is what most people want out of the R1250RT, I suspect it will have a lot of satisfied customers. Personally, I wouldn’t go near the thing. A K1600GT does all of this better, bigger, and faster, as does a Kawasaki Concours or — ssshhhh — the new Gold Wing. On the other hand, you can get a much more visceral and “authentic” experience for less money via one of the Ninja or Suzuki 1000cc sport-tourers. I can maybe see this being the answer to “if you can only have one bike” situations, but how many of those people really need something oriented this strongly towards the freeway?

Not that any of this really matters, any more than the 911SC’s obvious dynamic inferiorities to a 928S made a difference to Beetle Boys worldwide. If you want a Boxer Beemer, you want a Boxer Beemer, and my sidebars about Concours Kwackers or Suzuki GSX1000s are something between irrelevant and outright pathetic. I do worry, however, that BMW has soaked too much of the character and mechanical noise from the thing. This is nominally a distant successor to the mighty R1100RT, a bike that perhaps did more to ensure the future of Beemer Twins than any other motorcycle before or since. Those are brilliant, characterful, lovable bikes that unite eccentricities and excellencies in even-handed measures.

The R1250RT has half again the power and a cornucopia of additional sophistication, but if you had to choose one of them to be a daily companion I think most people would pick the old bike. In that respect, at least, the motorcycle business is exactly like the car business: the more progress society makes on its Gomorrah-bound slouch, the less desirable our vehicles become. Let me give you a reason to buy the R1250RT: it’s a miracle such a thing still exists. Let me give you a reason not to: every single minute you spend on two wheels is too dangerous to waste on such a milquetoast motorcycle. Up The Irons!