Letting Go

LETTING GO

A watershed Superbike goes home at last

"NOTHING?! What do you mean, nothing?! Not the guns, not the collection of Road & Track magazines, not the motorcycles?"

This is what I got for asking my oldest daughter what in the "Funhouse," my combined office/shop in Santa Barbara, California, she wanted should I get run over riding my KTM. Nothing-no thing.

it's beena longtime joke among my three ladies that after the run-over, there would be a sign posted in front of our home: "Long Guns $10, Short Ones $5." Firearms, however, would not be the problem, nor would the other stuff dragged home over a lifetime working in the automobile/motorcycle business. The exception was #83, the Butler & Smith BMW R9OS Superbike on which Steve McLaughlin won the world's first Superbike race at Daytona in 1976.

Purchased from Johnny's Motorcycles in Bakersfield as a "dealer demo" complete with California plate and tags, it was now worth far more than the 1980 purchase price of $5000. But aside from a recent stay at the AMA Museum in Ohio and a trip to the Del Mar Concours, the surviving example of the original three bikes built by Udo Gietl and Todd Schuster for the fledgling AMA Superbike class sat there, covered and largely forgotten after 24 years of ownership.

While hardly constituting a collection in the context of a George Barber, ownership of this piece of BMW history brought with it burdens that were beginning to outweigh the fun. Beyond theft, Phil Schilling's dreadful story about having to re-restore his 175 Ducati F3 after the infa mous Cycle magazine garage fire of 1971 had come to mean vacations spent worry ing about #83. When the AMA van doors opened and I saw my bike again for the first time in two years, a feel ing of renewed burden out weighed any sense of joy. I knew right then that it was time to let go.

Strangely, just seven years after I'd purchased the Superbike, the process that would see the bike returned to Germany 17 years later began. In 1987, a represen tative from BMW North America called to ask if I'd display the bike at the K75 dealer introduction. While I was loading the bike after that event, he asked if I'd notify the headquarters in Munich should I ever want to part with it.

Ten years on, I owned two vintage bikes, the Beemer and Schilling's "Red & Silver Pile," the 750SS Ducati racebike that had been backup to the famous "California Hot Rod" magazine project. I was busy building a wooden boat and the shop space taken up by these two old queens was getting harder to justify. It was then that I remembered the casual remark made a decade earlier, and the slow dance began.

In Munich on business in 2001, I visited BMW Mobile Tradition, hoping that owner ship of an interesting motor cycle would translate into a tour of the four-story, closedto-the-public fortress that houses company history. In a conference room, I laid my cards on the table: I wanted the Superbike to find its way back to factory ownership. Having never seen the bike, the administration first want ed to confirm that it was the real deal. After a quick "20 Questions" quiz (I passed!), they acknowledged openly that they wanted the bike. But like any museum, Mobile Tradition operates within a budget, and i was told there were two BMW motorcycles already budgeted for recapture: Georg Meier’s 1939 Isle of Man Senior TT-winning 5Q0cc Kompressor owned by John Surtees and a mid-’50s RS54 sidecar rig. I made it clear that I was in no hurry. The bike was not going to any auctions and would not be seen in the back pages of Cycle News. I would wait...

Fast forward to spring 2004. Rumors of a new S-model K-bike combined with BMW being the featured marque at the AMA’s Vintage Motorcycle Days suggested my wait was nearing its end. Sure enough,

I was contacted by Fred Jakobs of Mobile Tradition and a deal was quickly struck. Shortly thereafter, an empty 80-foot moving van arrived to transport the bike and every thing BMW that I'd collected over the years to Mid-Ohio and then on to Munich. I kept only one memento: the `16 winning poster glued to my shop door.

One might think this the end of my vintage odyssey, but BMW-never a company to do things in half measuresadded to what had been a wonderful 24-year ride by inviting my wife Diane and me to Mid-Ohio for a ceremonial transfer of ownership. For the first time in five years, the bike started right on cue-much to my relief and the obvious joy of Fred and his associates-and as I pushed it up onto the stage in the auction tent, I looked behind the stand to see the hundreds of machines about to be hammered down, final destination who knows where. I realized how fortunate #83 was to be going home, where it would spend its days with Ernst Henne's streamliner, Georg Meier's GP Kompressor, Helmut Dahne's R9OS endurance champions, Walter Zeller's `56 championship bike and the rest. A fitting retirement. --

Bruce Armstrong