Fashionable journey bikes all look fairly dang good, in my view. That mentioned, additionally they all look fairly comparable, as they comply with a really comparable design. There’s a big windscreen, a boxy and aggressive center, tall suspension, and a few knobby tires shod on wire wheels.
However that design language of aggressive and angular within the towers and bodywork sorta simply follows the identical path, main many to seem like carbon copies or as if I used to be copying another person’s homework. I get although, it is what the market is demanding.
Once more, I’ve no drawback with that design language being put onto virtually all the pieces. However it may get stale. You form of find yourself taking a look at a motorcycle and questioning, “Which make is that this?” You completely cannot try this with the brand new 2026 BMW R 12 G/S, which appears to be like prefer it was plucked out of the Eighties and off the sands of Dakar. The one factor lacking from this retro journey motorbike is a Marlboro livery and a mustachioed rider smoking cigarettes by the facet of some cafe.
I completely adore it.
I simply have one drawback and that is extra to do with whoever’s placing collectively BMW’s launch pictures. You’ve gotten this dope-looking retro bike. And based mostly on its specs, which I am going to get to in a second, it may do dope issues, like blasting by means of the Sahara on a whim. So why are you utilizing AI pictures to make mentioned dope-looking bike seem like it is doing dope issues? Why not simply do them and convey alongside a photographer? Why not be retro and even get somebody to shoot it on movie?
As a result of this, nicely, this feels mistaken.
Replace: A BMW spokesperson replied to our request for remark, stating, “Resulting from timing constraints main as much as the beginning of communications, using R 12 G/S pictures have been sourced from pictures used for Advertising and marketing/promoting. These are all the time far more closely edited than press images.
On this case, the using R 12 G/S images had been created utilizing AI instruments.
The press division plans on taking precise R 12 G/S using images in late Spring and these will probably be posted to the media web site as quickly as they’re prepared.” The unique story follows.
Picture by: BMW AG.
Picture by: BMW AG.
Picture by: BMW AG.
“With the brand new BMW R 12 G/S, BMW Motorrad is providing a basic enduro for puristic off-road enjoyable. The abbreviation borrowed from the legendary R 80 G/S stands for ‘Gelände / Straße’ (Off-road / Road) and indicators that the brand new member of the BMW R 12 household, masters each equally. We all know that quite a few followers have been eagerly ready for this motorbike,” says Markus Lederer, BMW’s Head of its Boxer Sequence.
And actually, you possibly can see the DNA from that unique R 80 G/S within the bike’s design, with the central hawkbeak/filth bike-esque fender, to the singular headlight and stance of the bike. It appears to be like glorious with out wanting too retro or pretentious.
Picture by: BMW AG.
As for mechanicals, an air/oil-cooled 1,170cc boxer engine gives the rider with 109 horsepower and 85 pound-feet of torque by means of a six-speed sequential guide transmission. That is then despatched to the rear tire by way of BMW’s well-known driveshaft, which gives much less of an opportunity of breaking or damaging a sequence whenever you’re railing on it by means of the desert or woods. A “high-mounted” exhaust completes the drivetrain bundle, thereby lowering the potential of shearing it off whenever you’re sending it.
You additionally get totally adjustable “upside-down telescopic entrance forks” with BMW’s Paralever rear swing arm, which additionally comes with a completely adjustable rear shock. A 21-inch entrance wheel and a 17-inch rear wheel come commonplace, however there may be an optionally available 18-inch rear wheel. Three experience modes include the bike, together with Rain, Street, and Enduro, whereas those that spec the R 12 G/S’ Enduro Package deal Professional get Enduro Professional.
And you may get all this with a beginning worth of $16,395, which is greater than cheap! However the AI of all of it…
Picture by: BMW AG.
Pay attention, I get the need to make use of new expertise. And I get it if BMW wasn’t fairly prepared to indicate off a manufacturing motorbike rampaging within the dunes. However for this retro bike that emulates a heritage mannequin, one steeped within the firm’s historical past, it seems like an odd alternative to make use of AI-generated pictures as press supplies and to get everybody hyped concerning the bike. And there is not any getting round that these are something however that, as all the pieces within the “motion pictures,” in addition to the approach to life images with “individuals” look…off.
The hallmark of AI technology.
Picture by: BMW AG.
What you find yourself with are pictures of the R 12 G/S, a suitably capital “R” rad motorbike doing all of the belongings you’d count on a rad motorbike to do, i.e. blasting by means of sand, getting parked up close to some cool geological options, stopping at a neighborhood Baja restearant known as “Bari Bar,” and proven with a few pretty-looking individuals having the instances of their lives.
Picture by: BMW AG.
Picture by: BMW AG.
However when you look nearer, the seaside the bikes are blasting down would not fairly line up with how seashores look, nor how water works, and the shadow forged by the rider is nowhere close to what a human using a motorbike would seem like. The picture of the man stopping on the aforementioned “Bari Bar”, who has some odd fingers. I additionally looked for Bari Bar in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France and bought nothing. And the shot of the motorbike in what seems to be the American southwest at first look appears to be like increasingly like Mars when you stare at it for longer than a second.
Picture by: BMW AG.
My level in all that is, why fake when the actual factor is so available and when your motorbike is so seemingly good for doing all the pieces in these photos? BMW may’ve known as me up and I’d’ve both taken the pictures myself or informed them the place to go and returned with manner higher images than this.
I reached out to BMW to ask what occurred, with a consultant telling me they had been going to ship my inquiry up the meals chain. So when or if I hear again, I am going to replace this story. However in the interim, as a lot as this motorbike appears to be like freakin’ superior, it is leaving a bizarre style in my mouth concerning the images the corporate selected to place forth.
