2026 BMW R 12 G/S First Ride
Karl-Heinz Gerlinger was in a bit of a pickle. As the newly appointed head of BMW Motorrad in 1980, he had the unenviable task of salvaging the entire motorcycle division from the chopping block. Yes, that’s right—BMW was seriously considering axing its then nearly 60-year-old history as Germany’s preeminent motorcycle brand. Looking at the lineup that year, it’s easy to see why hope was nearly lost. From top to bottom, the boxer-twin-powered machines were as hip as a man in a smoking jacket sipping a brandy. All this in a marketplace awash with furiously fast Japanese machines in an era when the average age of a motorcyclist was under 25 years-old. BMW was a heartbeat away from being dead in the water. And then the most bizarre Hail Mary in the history of motorcycles came along—the 1980 R 80 G/S. They had hoped to sell 3,000. They sold twice that.
In retrospect, it’s tempting to view the Hans Muth–designed 1980 G/S as a stroke of genius. After all, the ADV bike is the de facto standard motorcycle of our age, and in 2023 BMW announced it had sold its one-millionth boxer-powered GS. (Language anoraks take note: over time the model lost the slash between the G and the S. The original designation translated from the German as terrain/street, but now it’s accepted that the slashless GS more or less stands for terrainsport.) Before we anoint Muth & Co. as savants, it’s worthwhile noting that prior to that first G/S the line between dirt and street motorcycles was fairly distinct.
Yes, there were British and Japanese scramblers, though just as with the scrambler revival of today, they were mostly high-exhaust-pipe styling exercises. And while the Japanese made dual-sports, Honda’s XL line comes to mind, they were primarily of small to medium displacement. With the first G/S BMW bet the farm on a longshot, and that horse didn’t stop galloping until BMW was back on its feet and one of Europe’s major motorcycle manufacturers.
Retro Revival
Which brings us to the bike on test, the retro-homage R 12 G/S (not to be confused with the modern flagship, the no-forward-slash R 1300 GS). In the early days of the retro craze—think back to Triumph’s Bonneville revival of 2001—retro bikes lacked the panache of the originals. In the case of the Bonneville, the new bike looked like the old bike with 40 excess pounds of beer and chicken wings packed around its midriff. Though it was apropos, as many of the bike’s enthusiastic owners, who in their youth either owned or coveted the original bike, had suffered the same fate. It had the dispiriting effect of turning a legendarily light and lithe roadster into a machine that struggled to hike its trousers overtop its belly. Mercifully, times have changed.
While you can debate the merits of a manufacturer too slavishly mining its history, the retro motorcycle is finally coming into its own as a machine that stands on its own two wheels. The R 12 G/S has a stout 45 mm fork with adjustable preload as well as compression and rebound damping adjustment. On its standard settings it was supple in the dirt and didn’t wallow on pavement, even at a very quick pace. Our tester had just about every conceivable BMW factory option thrown at it, which raised its base price from $17,990 to somewhere nearer $23,000. Of the nearly $5,000 in options, the most significant was the $880 Enduro Package Pro, which adds an 18 in rear wheel (up from the 17 in stocker), handlebar risers, hand protectors, and grippy Michelin Anakee Wild tires, measuring 90/90-21 in the front and 150/70-18 rear. Toss this at the base bike and you gain a bunch of off-road capability.
Bring on the Dirt
According to BMW, the R 12 G/S, at 504 lb fully fueled, is only 20 lb lighter than the R 1300 GS, and yet the bikes feel entirely different. Perhaps the visual weight of the 1300’s fairing convinces the rider that it’s actual weight, but where the 1300 felt like a very big bike in the dirt, the 1,170 cc R 12 G/S felt eminently more flickable. I spent the better part of an afternoon, and nearly 100 miles, bombing dirt roads that ranged from hard-pack to deeply rutted forest access roads. In the past, I’ve never found the boxer to be an engine that fires the loins, but in the G/S the engine began to favorably shift my opinion. The onward march to extract ever more power out of the boxer over the years often came with an unwelcome coarseness. None of that was evident with the R 12 G/S. Its fat torque at low revs allowed controllable, drama-free dirt-track-style slides out of corners once I confirmed that the front end was planted. For me the front-end feel from a motorcycle is all. Mistrust it and it’s tough to ride with confidence at a quick pace. Could it be that the good old telescopic on the R 12 G/S gave me just a little more feel than the telelever on the R 1300 GS?
The miracle of modern motorcycling is tires, and I was astonished, as I always am, at how hard I could push on pavement with the Michelins’ aggressive tread. You could feel it wasn’t a polite street-only tire through the handlebar, but the tire gave you plenty of warning that you were approaching its (surprisingly high) limits. The downside of the tires was noise. At certain speeds, on certain roads, they’d howl like old-fashioned snow tires on a mid-’70s Chevy Impala.
Electronics for the Everyman
I’ve often been exasperated at the byzantine complexity of accessing the electronic controls on modern motorcycles. Which is doubly exasperating, as my (not so youthful) enthusiasm has often been saved from disaster by electronics. But submenus buried deep beneath the surface of interfaces make you wonder if engineers ever run this stuff past regular folks, or have ever ridden the motorcycle in question, before they set it loose on the public. Imagine my relief to find only one button on the R 12 G/S to toggle between Enduro, Enduro Pro, Rain, and Road modes. Each mode has dedicated settings for engine power, traction control, and ABS intervention, and it’s easy to change on the fly. How easy? Poke the button until you see the setting you’re looking for, and then roll off the throttle momentarily to engage. The only other button toggles between essential machine information like the odometer, battery voltage, fuel mileage, and, because I’m often running late, the clock, to keep me abreast of just how behind I am.
Reviewing motorcycles, and ADV bikes in particular, is exceptionally difficult because there is no universal ranking methodology to summarize machine capability independent of the rider. Performance, always, is dependent on the rider, especially off road. I know riders, and likely you do too, who could spoon knobbies on a clapped-out Gold Wing and tackle the Mojave in a fury of flying sand. A quick perusal of YouTube videos on the R 12 G/S indicated that there is no consensus on this machine. It’s either an overpriced Starbucks-parking-lot poser machine or the bike that best captures the spirit of the original G/S and can slay single track like a 250 two-stroke. Who, then, to believe?
Into the Woods
Here’s how the bike worked for me. And I suspect this is how most of these bikes will be used by those who actually buy them. I live in an area where two-thirds of the interesting roads are gravel, and a bike with dirt capability meant I could find more creative ways to explore my home turf. Chasing some sportbikes down a twisty road alongside a river, the tighter the road became, the more I gained on them. When we hit a zone where the road was chewed up in preparation for repaving, I blitzed past them. They’d lost their confidence, but not me. And then I saw a dirt road that looked interesting and that I’d never explored. I braked hard, toggled the mode button to Enduro Pro, and wound down into a valley on a road deeply shaded by trees that threatened to consume the road itself. The dirt was damp and the traction was excellent (no dust was a bonus, too). But the best part? No traffic. Finally, the road ceased to be a road (confirmed by the “no winter maintenance” sign), and ahead of me was a steep climb on very loose terrain.
This is where the bike’s capability is totally up to you. It wasn’t very elegant, but I surfed my way up the hill until it turned into a muddy, rutted, two-track ADV path. Ideally, I’d have ridden the crown between the ruts, but it was so slick my wheels kept sliding down into the ruts. On a lightweight machine I’d have been fine, but every one of those 500 pounds on the G/S was struggling against what I wanted to achieve. Eventually, I made it to the crest of the hill, though I had to double back and get a second run at one particularly gnarly section. How would you have done? Some of you would have danced on up, the challenge no greater than a speed bump in a school zone, while some of you would have had a very, very challenging time that would have taken the sheen off a lovely afternoon ride.
New and New-Old—All at the Same Time
What’s odd about the G/S is that it’s in a lineup with the GS. Modern vs. semi-modern. They’re not direct rivals, but comparing between the two is instructive. And since I’d ridden both bikes back to back, it was inevitable that I’d consider one against the other. For the long haul the modern GS is unquestionably the way to go. Its fairing and adjustable windshield and bodywork create a pocket of air that’s a respite from the onrushing wind. At whatever speed you choose. Conversely, the retro G/S, with its minuscule (though useful, nonetheless) headlight fairing, became tiresome at sustained speeds over 70 mph.
But beyond that there’s a subtle difference in both the mindset of the two bikes and, indeed, in my present mindset that makes the R 12 G/S a far more appealing bike than I’d expected. The simplicity of the electronics, for one, is a definite draw. As are the looks of the thing, which I find appealing without being too predictably derivative of the 1980 G/S. Think of the G/S as an old-fashioned standard for crumbling infrastructure and you’re on your way to appreciating the bike for what it is, not for what it isn’t. If there’s a caveat, and what motorcycle doesn’t come with a caveat?, it’s that the 33.9 in seat height may not be inseam-friendly for some. And unlike the modern GS, which has electronic trickery that lowers the bike while at a standstill, the G/S relies on the length of your legs. How retro. As is the fuel tank capacity of 4.1 gal, which returned a fuel range of 188 miles from an average of 47 mpg.
Final Thoughts
Some of you, undoubtedly, will be mumbling beneath your breath that $20,000, give or take, is an awful lot of money for a motorcycle that can do what a lot of other bikes can do for a lot less. And you’re right. In the same way that a used $5,000 Japanese four-cylinder 600 sport bike, for most riders, can do pretty much what a Ducati Panigale V4R can do on a racetrack. For some riders, the differences between those two bikes make the cost differential (if you can afford it, naturally) worth it, while for others a $50,000 motorcycle will never be anything other than a blatant rip-off.
Whether the R 12 G/S is a fit for you is entirely up to you to determine. For me it’s pretty close to an ideal motorcycle for the current state of my motorcycling life. For my half-day, clear-the-mind meandering on quiet roads that, invariably, lead me to a small-town café with furiously strong espresso. Which leaves the $20,000 entry fee as the only unresolved issue in the ownership equation.
Marketplace Inventory
Neil Graham
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