Boxer Brigade

After 97 years manufacturing opposed twins, BMW decided to build a mega-cruiser. As in really long and low, using historic Motorrad design elements and sporting a massive, air-cooled, 1,802cc boxer engine. And all done from the ground up for North America.

More than four decades after Japanese companies entered the cruiser segment, this long-in-coming—but also forward-looking—proposition is based on intel that the next generation of riders is open to cruisers and not just typical V-twins.

Call it a changing of the generational guard, but BMW sees this time as a window and the R 18 as the right arrow to shoot through it.

American Motorcyclist doesn’t conduct formal bike reviews, but is highly interested in people. Motorcycle people. Our people.

So, when BMW made one of the new R 18s available, we instantly knew what to do: Put it in the hands of as wide a variety of motorcyclists as we could to see what they thought.

From 30 years old into their 70s, male and female, racers, wrenches, musicians and entrepreneurs, one of each was dropped into the saddle of this new megaboxer.

We met seven riders during two days in October along the California coast. Full of life, full of personality and opinion and full of motorcycle experiences, including riding, racing, touring, collecting, restoration and more, each was introduced privately to the R 18.

We showed them how to work the three ride modes (Rock, Roll and Rain), the multifunction display—and, just in case, the electric reverse gear, too—and sent them on their way.

Their mission: Ride the BMW where they liked and as they liked, and return in an hour or so. Our mission: Record their impressions immediately upon return.

We hope you enjoy meeting and hearing from them as much as we did.

Wendy Newton

IT Business Owner, Motorcycle Adventurer

Founder of a Los Angeles-based IT company, Wendy Newton started riding pillion on her boyfriend’s Harley-Davidson.

Soon, that didn’t cut it, and she bought a Heritage Softail of her own, before getting to experience the acceleration of a friend’s superbike.

That led Newton to sport bikes and amateur road racing, in which she claimed a class win at Daytona International Speedway.

Newton also is a dedicated mechanic. Perhaps owing to her IT skills, she wants and needs to figure out mechanical, electrical, suspension and fuel issues. She even pinstriped the fenders of her BMW R50 herself.

We knew about Newton’s penchant for tackling difficult things, so it was no great shock to find her insistent upon handling the giant R 18.

Although athletic, at 5 feet, 5 inches, Newton looked overpowered by the big boxer, but this was hardly the case. She peeled away from our meeting spot, found a nearby canyon road and disappeared into the Santa Monica Mountains.

There, she gained appreciation for the BMW’s power—and we gained an appreciation for a smaller rider managing such a big bike.

“There’s a lot of bike here, lots of torque right from the start,” she said. “The rat-a-tat mechanical noise sounds like a BMW boxer, too.”

As a former racer, Newton knows that bikes feel different in motion than while static. Which is why she headed for the hills to check out the R 18’s handling, gearbox and cornering clearance. (And yes, she tagged the footpegs.)

“The bike feels unwieldy at first, but once rolling, it’s incredible,” she related. “That said, I wish they made a smaller version, because it is a little intimidating when you slow down.”

This observation makes sense, because Newton’s side enterprise, Helmets n’ Heels, seeks to support females in the sport.

Reg Pridmore

AMA Superbike Champion, CLASS Safety Instructor

To longtime AMA racing and BMW fans, Reg Pridmore needs no introduction. In 1976, the U.K. native won the first AMA Superbike championship aboard a BMW R90S, which remains to this day BMW’s only such title.

Pridmore backed it up in 1977 and ’78 on Kawasakis to become a three-time AMA champ. “Rego” was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002.

Subsequently, Pridmore started CLASS, a safety school that is now celebrating its 35th year. We wanted to know what, if anything, the R 18 shares dynamically with the R75/5 and R90S Beemers that Pridmore raced in the 1970s.

Obviously, the boxer engine’s crankshaft is positioned longitudinally and the torque reaction when rapping the throttle yanks the bike hard to the side. But Pridmore knows all about this reaction.

When he was racing BMWs, he learned that, on right-hand corners, this torque reaction pulled his bike down toward the track. This caused Pridmore to modify his riding style to hang off the bike more in right-hand than in left-hand corners.

“On the right, it always went a little deeper, so I had to hang off about another foot,” he recalled.

After cruising the R 18 along the Pacific Coast Highway and exploring various side roads at decidedly less-than-racetrack pace, Pridmore collected his thoughts.

“I’ve ridden a lot of strange machines and, despite its size, this one isn’t strange; it’s a perfectionist in its own way,” he said. “I’m sure that you could get used to it within time; I know I could. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d go as far as an 8.”

John Pera

Operations Manager And Curator, Big Dog Garage; Motorcycle Collector

In 29 years spent at Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage, John Pera has seen, touched and worked on just about everything, from multimillion-dollar Bugattis to little Moto Rumi bikes.

We’d have guessed it would be hard to surprise this master mechanic and vehicle connoisseur with the new R 18, and we were right. He arrived on time, aboard a sparkling Royal Enfield Interceptor 650, having slogged through LA traffic and then sprinted up the PCH to meet us.

Frankly, parked alongside the Enfield, the R 18 looked like a water buffalo towering over a whippet.

To start his ride, Pera selected the bike’s middle power position, Roll, clicked the gearbox into first and swung right, heading south toward LA and Malibu’s marvelous Mulholland Highway.

Although respectful of the BMW’s dimensions, Pera adapted quickly and returned complimenting just about everything, from the ride quality to the engine torque and the seating.

“Fantastic, amazing torque,” he said, after dismounting. “It’s comfortable, and smooth as glass when you get going.”

After starting in Roll, Pera spent most of his ride time in full-power Rock mode.
“Also, the brakes are good,” he said, “and the style is great.”

Pera owns 30 motorcycles, including Moto Guzzi’s big California 1400.

“I like cruisers and have ridden many, including [Kawasaki] Vulcans and the [Triumph] Rocket 3, and I owned a [Yamaha] Road Star Warrior,” he said. “This has the widest engine I’ve ever seen, though. It made me nervous in the first five or six corners; I was terrified of dragging a cylinder. But I could live with it. BMW has a history of making everything they design absolutely perfect for what they built it for.”

Fito de la Parra

Drummer, Canned Heat; BMW Owner

The Canned Heat drummer since 1967, Fito de la Parra is also a lifelong BMW fan. The Mexico City native bought his first boxer, an R60/2, in 1966, and has owned more than a dozen since then.

When we reached him, de la Parra already had the R 18 on his radar and was eager to ride it. We figured not much could astonish someone who had played at Woodstock in 1969.

We were wrong.

Nursing a sore back, de la Parra was at first intimidated by the bike’s sheer size. Initially, we didn’t know if he would actually take our ride offer. That is, until he gingerly climbed aboard. Then, the low seat, wide bars and low center of gravity won him over, as he discovered that what looks massive actually feels lighter once you’re seated.

Minding his back, he put the R 18 into motion slowly, feet down until feeling the bike’s balance and then turned left onto a frontage road and disappeared along the hedgerows.

He had no intention of pounding the R 18 as hard as his drum kit while playing “On the Road Again.”

Upon his return, the worry had segued to smiles.

“My first thoughts were, ‘This is heavy and too big,’” he said. “I was a little bit tense. Even after all my experience, it is still a little weird to jump on a big monster like this. After two rides, I became much more comfortable, and now I’m starting to like it. Wait. Not only that, I’m starting to love it.”

After de la Parra’s second ride, he marveled at how motorcycles and drums both require precise “quadridexterity”— hands and feet performing separate jobs in perfect synchronicity.

Who would’ve thought? Motorbikes and drum kits, nature’s perfect pairing.

Tim Stafford

Stafford Restorations Owner, 1950s and ’60s BMW Expert

In a strange quirk of fate, master BMW restorer Tim Stafford admitted he had never ridden any motorcycle newer than 1978, BMWs included.

Instead, his moto sweet spot is restoring bikes from the 1950s and ’60s, which have earned best-in-class awards at events like The Quail Motorcycle Gathering.

Upon meeting the R 18, Stafford was immediately drawn to its various classic forms, including the gas tank, hardtail-look swingarm, exposed nickel-plated driveshaft and chromed pushrod tubes. These he quickly described as being influenced by certain BMW models going back decades. Impressive.

A swimmer, runner and cyclist, Stafford is clearly fit. But, even so, the newness, power and, most of all, size of the R 18 made him cautious in approaching the bike.

“It looks like a Rottweiler that ate too much,” he mused.

Understandably, Stafford started with the power setting in the easygoing Rain mode, to avoid potential craziness.

Saying the R 18 is a world apart from the BMW airheads that are Stafford’s stock in trade, is a real understatement. Thus, Stafford found contentment experiencing the R 18 along frontage roads and the PCH instead of scorching through the many nearby devil’s hairpins.

He returned more appreciative of the bike’s aesthetics than its dynamics.

“My main likes on this bike are visual,” he said, “and I most like the tank and the rear frame section. You can tell it has an opposed-twin engine and a driveshaft, but it doesn’t feel like a BMW to me.”

Regardless, we were happy to help Stafford fill in a 43-year engineering gap with some time on the new R 18. Maybe in 2041, he’ll be restoring one!

Randy Pobst

Car Racing Champion, Motorcycle Enthusiast

When you’re an 11-time professional car-racing champion and your Instagram page reads, “But really, I’m a bike guy,” that says a lot.

Indeed, Randy Pobst, a two-time Daytona 24 Hours GT champion, loves motorcycles, as proven by a Rickman-Honda 750 in his living room, plus 15 vintage Japanese bikes and a BMW R 1200 GS daily rider in the garage.

For our R 18 ride day, Pobst arrived in a 640-horsepower Porsche 911 Turbo S—another boxer, only this one with six cylinders instead of two.

Wearing fireproof Alpinestars driving shoes and gloves, a carbon-fiber car-racing helmet and an Alpinestars sportbike jacket, the longtime AMA member was briefly ours between hot-shoeing for Motor Trend’s annual Best Driver’s Car comparison at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and race testing at Thunderhill Raceway Park.

Having just climbed out of a Porsche that can lunge from zero to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds, “The Rocket” (Randy‘s nickname) was not intimidated by the BMW.

In his formative years as an autocross racer, Pobst learned vehicle dynamics and chassis setup well. So we received a full-on technical download when he returned.

“There’s a sense of power without a peaky or sudden powerband,” he said. “It doesn’t explode, it just flows. I like torque, and the engine has so much of it. It can run in sixth gear at 35 mph and 1,700 rpm and then just chug away. It’s that strong. The engine vibrates enough to feel alive, and it rolls the bike over when you rev it up. I love that, too.”

Mind you, Pobst had just finished hot-lapping a Lamborghini Huracán and a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500.

“They’re loud as hell,” he said. “The BMW’s exhaust system actually makes a little bit of noise, and it is a pleasant sound. I am so happy to hear that.”

Adam Enticknap

Ama Supercross/Motocross Racer, Musical Artist

Popular AMA Supercross and motocross rider Adam Enticknap probably spends more time in the air than on the ground. And that includes flying to the beat of his moto-themed music, wherein he is known as the “Seven Deuce Deuce.”

Brimming with personality, Enticknap was curious about what the claimed 671-pound BMW behemoth could possibly have in common with a 240-pound Suzuki RM-Z450. He found out on the cool Southern California coast, three days after the 2020 Pro Motocross finale.

At 6-foot 2-inches and 200 pounds, Adam is big for a motocross star. And strong: For him, the BMW’s size and weight presented no issues.

He grabbed the left handgrip, swung one lanky leg over the saddle, snapped the bike upright and settled into the seat.

“Oh, this thing is low,” he said, grinning.

And he was right. The BMW’s 27-inch seat height is way below an MX bike’s 37-inch saddle.

After selecting the full-power “Rock” mode, Enticknap headed for a winding two-lane and its hundreds of turns. When he returned, the R 18’s rear tire was scrubbed nearly to the edges.

“Obviously, supercross is an adrenaline rush, one of the craziest things you can do on a dirt bike,” Enticknap said. “Coming from this background, I was pleasantly surprised that you can have a lot of fun on one of these things.

“I got the pegs to scrape a little bit while leaning. It has plenty of horsepower, and it felt like what we all love: getting on two wheels and really feeling like you’re on a motorcycle.”

Naturally, Enticknap couldn’t resist sliding the R 18 around a dirt turn he found nearby.

“Pitching it sideways was definitely interesting,” he said. “You can’t really feel the weight when it’s upright, but man, when it’s sideways, it’s like, ‘OK, I can feel it now!’”

John L. Stein is an AMA member from Santa Barbara, Calif.