BMW R nineT Urban GS 2019 — Specifications

Forty years after the R 80 G/S laid the foundations of an entire category, BMW isn't just commemorating. The Bavarian firm reinvents, grafts, hybridizes. The BMW R nineT Urban GS is this improbable result: a legendary motorcycle put through a photo editing software, emerging with the visual codes of the 80s and the guts of a modern roadster. Testing the BMW R nineT Urban GS doesn't leave you indifferent, in one way or another.

The style hits you first. The curved front beak, the two-tone seat, the squat little windscreen, the white paint with Bavarian blue stripes, the fork gaiters that smell of the African piste: BMW has identified the iconic markers and replated them onto the NineT base with surgical precision. The problem is precisely there. Under the tribute bodywork lies a NineT Scrambler re-bodied, not a machine developed from scratch. It's commercially effective, mechanically honest, but those hoping for a technological breakthrough will be disappointed. A base, several costumes. BMW has understood for a long time that this recipe works.

The air-cooled 1170 cm3 boxer engine is a familiar acquaintance. Those who want to know the weight of a BMW R nineT Urban GS or its seat height will find their answers in the raw figures: 221 kilograms fully fueled, the seat at 850 mm from the ground. It's not a motorcycle for short riders, and the 221 kilograms are felt when maneuvering. On the road, however, the twin takes over. Its 110 horsepower at 7750 rpm and 116 Nm of torque at 6000 rpm are delivered with that organic character typical of large flat-twin engines. No frenzy, no hysteria in the revs; a readily available, frank power that pushes in your back from the mid-range. You roll, you manage, you enjoy. The six-speed gearbox and shaft drive complete the picture of a motorcycle designed to devour kilometers, not to shave tenths off the clock.

The chassis reflects this positioning. The 43 mm telescopic fork and the mono-shock with an aluminum swingarm equipped with Paralever function without fanfare. The slightly increased stroke compared to the standard NineT, the 19-inch front wheel and the front double 320 mm disc brakes with ABS give the whole a real coherence. It's not the electronic sophistication of a BMW R 1250 GS with its multiple riding modes and semi-active suspension, but for a machine with an urban and road vocation, it is sufficient. The announced top speed of 200 km/h will remain anecdotal in real use, as will the contained consumption of 5.3 liters per 100 km, which makes the 17 liters of the tank truly exploitable.

The question of positioning remains. At 13,950 euros, the BMW R nineT Urban GS is not for the first-time buyer. Its target audience is the nostalgic globetrotter, the forty-year-old who grew up with Paris-Dakar posters and wants to rediscover an aesthetic without sacrificing modern comfort. Faced with a Ducati Scrambler 1100 or a Triumph Scrambler 1200, it holds its own stylistically and mechanically, with that inimitable Bavarian identity. The real regret, and it is sincere, concerns the spoked wheels with trail tires: offered as an option, they should have been standard. Without them, the machine loses part of its visual credibility, that touch of fictional mud that is the whole point of the concept.

The BMW R nineT Urban GS does not claim to go where the old R 80 G/S really went. It sells a dream, a posture, a character. And it does it well, without cheating on the mechanics.