OWNING YOUR DREAM BIKE
Some say you should never meet your hero, yet a decade and 8356 miles ago Tim Thompson forked out for his dream bike. Was it worth it?
Ten years ago ex-bike editor Tim Thompson bought his dream bike…
IT’S THE ONE that drives you to distraction. Compels you to read and re-read the road tests while intricately juggling finances, twisting your brain until it works out how a deal might somehow be done. And no bike has distracted me quite like the BMW HP2 Sport, the air-cooled boxer twin that on first sight in 2008 was so beautiful and correct it swept away all reason.
Even today I still love its looks as much as the possibly true story of how it was bolted together in a corner of the Motorrad factory by a bunch of talented mavericks bored of BMW’S stodgy output. Their creation was as contrary as it was eccentric: essentially a shaft-driven tourer given an engine tweak and a suit of carbon-fibre armour, then sent out to joust with the 190bhp superbikes that ruled the Le Mans 24-hours. Objectively there was no point to it. Why build a race bike without any chance of it winning? It was like making a carbonfibre Messerschmitt Bf 109 – lovely to look at, if only for the five minutes it survived before being blown to bits and pieces by a passing Eurofighter. Mind you, what a five minutes.
When you really want a motorbike, you become a passenger. I couldn’t afford or justify an HP2 Sport, so I trawled the internet for updates on its rumoured 2D dash logger and carbon heads while imagining what it would feel like to ride. Yet I’d been unwittingly rushing towards one from the moment I first sat on an R1100S, BMW’S first rather self-conscious stab at making a cool and sporty boxer twin.
That bike was dense, ponderous and ugly but equally a delight. Six thousand miles, two holidays and even one race later I was hooked on the concept. If only it were lighter, a tad prettier and, of course, faster.
The R1200S that followed promised more than it delivered but then came rumours of this carbon-saturated super-tuned boxer racer, with a limited-run of road bikes to follow. And I was already making plans.
Come the wintry morning friend Bruce and I headed north in his van to collect my brand new HP2 Sport I was so consumed I couldn’t quite grasp why everyone else with a motorcycle licence
hadn’t also emptied their building society accounts to raise funds for one. After all, numbers were limited, so hurry!
It was great that Bruce, a racer whose dream bike come true is a Yamaha TZ250, was the one to accompany me on this momentous outing because he had done more than just dribble over pictures of the HP2, he’d actually ridden one. Oh. And I’d also lost sight of the fact that boxer twins – even those with replaceable nylon sliders on their cylinder heads – were in 2009 still widely considered to be transport for old men. Perhaps I really was about to waste 15-grand on 200 kilos of yachting apparatus.
Happily, ten years and 8356 miles later, the dream lives on, though I still have moments of doubt and disappointment. There’s an assumption, for example, that it was fitted out with the best of everything, but an interfering accountant clearly had a hand in finalising its spec. Yes, it has Brembo monobloc brake calipers and Öhlins suspension but the brake and clutch master cylinders and levers are actually by Magura while the underdamped front shock is way off the pace.
A spiky throttle response was another early surprise. I expected a gravy-soaked midrange but there wasn’t enough petrol going in to make it much more than a watery disappointment. A Power Commander V was a game changer, releasing more power and torque and, crucially, creating a far happier engine – now with smoothed edges, especially on a closing throttle, and a lovely rolling pick up to help drive the bike off its beloved sweepers. There have been two recalls and one warranty claim but no mechanical disasters. And the longer I own it the more I appreciate its understated ability and idiosyncrasies, particularly its soundtrack.
It has that thunderous aero roar, the one that makes silver-haired chaps look aloft in search of a Lancaster, and also a grumble and mutter, like an old safe cracker persuaded to come out of retirement to do one last job – now cursing as the sirens get louder. Sometimes it makes the sound of bathwater going down the plughole. There’s drilling, too, and a boffing and cracking on the overrun, which light up my day.
I’ve also discovered two gearboxes. The one that crashes first gear home and makes the car driver at the lights think he’s being car-jacked, and the buttery-smooth one, which makes your left foot feel like it’s up-shifting in a bath of warm treacle. In traffic, the clutch smells like someone’s come home drunk and put their trainers in the oven, but I like that too.
How good is its engine? Power-wise the new Shiftcam boxer has just about caught up with the stock HP2, though not with mine, which makes 133bhp at the wheel. This, the first dohc boxer, was built to rev and still be making useful power at 9000rpm, but it feels fraught up there so it’s in that syrupy midrange that we live. Meanwhile, it uses no oil and finding the high-octane petrol it needs is much easier than it was ten years ago, though I don’t dare look at the price of the 98-RON unleaded. Instead I waft my card and worry about it later.
When it moves into its sweet spot the HP2 is still, after all these years and countless other bikes ridden, so richly rewarding it’s hard to think of anything better. An optimal ride feels slow-fast and as unrushed as Trevor Brooking driving in a pair of stringbacks. It tracks to the millimetre and sweeps with elegance, the twin’s output always enough but never too much.
Weird, unyielding Telelever geometry makes it scruffy in slow corners and it requires conscious inputs at the bars, but on proper corners the bike seems naturally to find a line of least resistance, encouraging me to ride with minimal
‘… the clutch smells like someone’s come home drunk and put their trainers in the oven, but I like that’
input and away from the brakes, with deliberate downshifts, perhaps running a gear too high just to take the stress out of the shaft drive.
Then I come home and still lose myself in the HP2’S detail and contradictions: shaft drive and a quick-shifter! Ancient 1923 engine architecture and a self-supporting carbon fibre subframe! The adjustability of the chassis, the delicacy of the milled upper yoke and footrest assemblies… I do a little polishing, as thrilled by the bike’s surfaces as I was in 2009.
I do the engine basics myself because it is, despite its drag levers and conically ground cams, just a boxer. What could possibly go wrong? Except one evening I took a coffee out to the garage and started casually lifting a borrowed Husqvarna Nuda with an Abba stand. Seconds later my mug and the Nuda lay shattered on the floor along with the HP2, which the Nuda collected on its way down. I turned around and walked out of the garage, unable to comprehend the carnage I had wrought.
Enough of that. For me no two summers are the same. One year it might do 3000 miles, the next, 300, and there is an ongoing conflict between wanting to ride it and not wanting to use it up or make it feel commonplace or every day. It has done over 100 laps of the Nürburgring as well as trackdays at Cadwell, Snetterton and Rockingham plus a trip with mates to the Massif Central – that’s with a rucksack and tiny tank bag only as it’s strictly no luggage on the tail-unit.
Ten years later that obsession – especially my need for it to be clean – has subsided but the HP2 remains absolutely the bike I want, both in my garage and on the road.
I still waste hours of garage time with it, making lists or removing, say, a wheel for no apparent reason. I notice, too, that whenever I ride it and sometimes when I do no more than roll it onto the drive for a winter start-up, it only takes a single ray of sunlight to ping off its carbon flanks to get me reaching for the camera and turning the afternoon into a photoshoot. Proof, in any relationship, that the magic remains.
Dream fulfilled.
‘Ten years later… the HP2 remains absolutely the bike I want, both in my garage and on the road’