THE FIRST ADVENTURE BIKE: Where'd the Legendary BMW GS come from and where's it going?
Can you imagine a motorcycle universe without the Adventure Bike? But before the 1980 BMW R 80 G/S (Gelände/Strasse) there really wasn't such a thing. Now ADVs have spawned an entire culture of two-wheel adventuring. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer talk about the origins of the BMW GS and its evolution to the new R 1300 GS. Join us on our hour-long adventure!
Shopping for a motorcycle? Get pre-approved for that R 1300 GS you always wanted: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Photo by Jeff Allen/Cycle World
Subscribe to Cycle World Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/cycleworld?sub_confirmation=1
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Shopping for a motorcycle? Get pre-approved for that R 1300 GS you always wanted: https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Photo by Jeff Allen/Cycle World
Subscribe to Cycle World Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/cycleworld?sub_confirmation=1
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00Welcome once again to the Cycleworld podcast. I'm Mark Hoyer, Editor-in-Chief.
00:00:04I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:08Thanks for listening.
00:00:10A message from our sponsors.
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00:00:58unbiased and independent, and they support that very much and we appreciate it.
00:01:02On to that unbiased message.
00:01:06Investigative. Well, this week's topic is the evolution
00:01:10of BMW's GS models. So the R1300 GS
00:01:14just came out. It's another great next step in the evolution
00:01:18of the Adventure bike and the GS Adventure bike
00:01:22which is very much its own thing. It has a very
00:01:26let's say focused expression of what
00:01:30BMW is and how BMW interprets an Adventure bike
00:01:34and of course without the 1980 R8 EGS and then the Skunkworks
00:01:38fellas, Big Fritz or whatever his name was
00:01:42who was riding in the ISDT on a basically
00:01:46Skunkworks bike, a bike that they kind of built up to try it out
00:01:50and see what it was like off-road and they got a real big guy to ride a relatively big bike
00:01:54and they were out there doing it.
00:01:58Here we are, decades later
00:02:02and the Adventure bike market is very large, big segment
00:02:06it's kind of displaced sport touring, it's a lot of things
00:02:10people use them in many different ways
00:02:14for all the people who say, oh we just ride them to coffee
00:02:18shops and blah blah blah or they dress like astronauts
00:02:22well, you know, people really ride these things
00:02:26everywhere and that's what they're good for
00:02:30There's the question of liberty
00:02:34if you buy it, it's up to you where to ride it
00:02:38and if people want to make fun of you for something that you do
00:02:42then you can make faces at them
00:02:46or you can just keep riding farther and farther away
00:02:50So yeah, we're using the launch of the 1300
00:02:54as kind of the talking points about the evolution of the GS and the flat twin
00:02:58and
00:03:02I've ridden quite a number of these bikes over the years
00:03:06I rode the 02 at the launch in South Africa and then we went back again for
00:03:102013 and there's specific things we'll talk about there
00:03:14but as ever, we're going to start at the Big Bang
00:03:18for BMW really
00:03:22Big Bang was really way back in the day but we're going back in time
00:03:26and I'm going to hand that to Kevin because he's got it
00:03:30He was there, he saw the flash
00:03:34Well, the Big Bang of course was 1969
00:03:38the arrival of the Slash 5
00:03:42There was a reason why the Slash 5 was essential
00:03:46to the future of BMW because when the war
00:03:50World War II ended in 1945
00:03:54the quickest way to get a motor vehicle back into production was to build a motorcycle
00:03:58Germany's motorcycle production just
00:04:02grew tremendously. They had two of the world's
00:04:06largest producers within eight years
00:04:10and then in 1955 it all fell down
00:04:14because cars had been tooled. Small, inexpensive
00:04:18cars that a family could fit into
00:04:22Try fitting your family into a Steib
00:04:26on a classic BMW with sidecar lugs integral
00:04:30with the frame. Yes, Steib is a sidecar brand. For folks who
00:04:34are not into the three-wheeled universe, Steib is a
00:04:38German sidecar brand. From the 50s, from the 40s and 50s
00:04:42So, there was a
00:04:46tremendous decline in sales of motorcycles and in
00:04:50BMW literature you will see it proclaimed that also
00:04:54BMW was known as a producer of
00:04:58gentlemanly but precisely
00:05:02made and long-lived classic motorcycles
00:05:06and with beautiful white pinstriped paint
00:05:10quite slow and I remember riding
00:05:14one down Storrow Drive in Boston and there was a place where there was
00:05:18some long wave action in the pavement and the front end just was going
00:05:22Even to the
00:05:26R90S which we did a comparison
00:05:30basically a retro comparison test because Peter Egan owned a
00:05:34Norton 850 Commando 1974
00:05:38and I forget what year his R90S was
00:05:42and we rode those together and the Commando
00:05:46was like a puppy that wanted to play. It was just roarty and snorty and it wanted to
00:05:50change direction and rev and do all the things that we love about
00:05:54Norton Commandos and the BMW character. That was their performance model
00:05:58their 900. It was very, very linear in its speed
00:06:02You were sort of surprised. Oh, well now I'm going 90
00:06:06and it just had a very deep keel. That's how we described it.
00:06:10The R90 had a very deep keel.
00:06:14Well
00:06:18for a time there was a proposal that BMW should simply
00:06:22cease motorcycle production. These are modern times
00:06:26the car division is things are looking up
00:06:30and this provoked a tremendous reaction
00:06:34and all these elderly shareholders were brought down from the Bavarian mountains
00:06:38to vote against. No, we are not discontinuing motorcycles
00:06:42so what they did then was
00:06:46they brought in two fellows from Porsche. One of them was Klaus von
00:06:50Urucher and the other whom I've met, he's no longer
00:06:54with us, Hans von der Marwitz
00:06:58and von der Marwitz had some experience racing British
00:07:02singles and he proclaimed that
00:07:06his team would design a BMW that would combine
00:07:10the handling of a Max Norton with the comfort of a Tourer
00:07:14and they ended up with
00:07:18a really short 54.5 inch wheelbase which is
00:07:22racy but 8 inches of wheel travel
00:07:26so you could really nose dive the thing
00:07:30and mind you this had a telescopic fork
00:07:34which reduced the polar moment of the steered
00:07:38assembly by 57% over the
00:07:42long leading link Earl's fork from the sidecar days.
00:07:46So a completely new engine
00:07:50was designed based on automotive
00:07:54practice. The old BMWs, the Slash II were
00:07:58roller motors. They had roller rods, roller
00:08:02crankshaft and they also flipped the engine upside
00:08:06down. They put the camshaft underneath, the pushrods on the bottom
00:08:10they adopted plain bearings
00:08:14they still retained the tunnel style crankcase. You
00:08:18slip the crankshaft into the case from the front
00:08:22and the new motorcycle
00:08:26was an entirely new direction for BMW
00:08:30but you'll notice that the engine, the new engine they designed
00:08:34was a flat twin just as originally specified
00:08:38by Max Fries, the aircraft
00:08:42engine designer. To him it made perfect sense because it put the cylinders out
00:08:46in the breeze where they could be cooled and
00:08:50this new motorcycle attempted
00:08:54to bring together
00:08:58the traditionalists who would not have anything but a BMW
00:09:02motorcycle with the new concept
00:09:06and the new rider which is a rider who is
00:09:10not riding from necessity but from preference.
00:09:14Motorcycles had ceased to be transportation in 1955
00:09:18this new BMW was going to bring adventure
00:09:22into the lives of its riders because of its higher
00:09:26performance and in October of 69
00:09:30the R75 Slash V
00:09:34was introduced and big motor
00:09:38for BMW and big action
00:09:42because the motorcycle was much lighter than before, performance
00:09:46was higher and yet there were those cylinders so
00:09:50the original character was retained
00:09:54and this will prove to be essential throughout
00:09:58the GS story.
00:10:02So in 73
00:10:06not long after they lengthened the wheelbase a little bit
00:10:10looks like Van der Marwitz sort of underdid it
00:10:14there with 54.5 inches. That's short man
00:10:18that's R6 territory. It sure is
00:10:22and so moves
00:10:26were made to keep everyone happy
00:10:30and of course then we had
00:10:34Rüdiger Gutscher who was
00:10:38BMW's sort of jack of all trades and he's off
00:10:42in the background. You hear a boring machine going
00:10:46and what are you doing back here? I'm boring my
00:10:50R75 to 90 millimeters
00:10:54and this provoked controversy
00:10:58because Van der Marwitz
00:11:02wanted 750 to be the
00:11:06limit. He thought that was the gentlemanly compromise
00:11:10and the people who were
00:11:14promoting, whose responsibility it was to sell
00:11:18these things, Eberhard von Kuenheim
00:11:22who was car and bike supremo
00:11:26and Bob Lutz with
00:11:30responsibilities in the US said no
00:11:34Honda has 67 horsepower with their CB
00:11:38750 we're going to have 67 horsepower and we're going to
00:11:42build a 900 right now. Yeah von Kuenheim was credited with
00:11:46kind of saving the whole shebang back in the 2002
00:11:50the sedan 2002 days and then also the motorcycle division
00:11:54and in fact von Kuenheim's son ran
00:11:58the motorcycle division
00:12:02roughly, he was probably in place around 2012
00:12:062011. There was another von Kuenheim
00:12:10at the helm.
00:12:14So this opened
00:12:18up new prospects altogether. One of which
00:12:22was the arrival in 1980 of a completely
00:12:26different kind of BMW, the R80GS
00:12:30which was an on and off road capable
00:12:34motorcycle, greatly lightened
00:12:38pepped up in every respect with a lightweight
00:12:42flywheel and clutch assembly so that when you turn the
00:12:46throttle the engine didn't seem to look around and say
00:12:50what do you have in mind? It was a sort
00:12:54of right now motorcycle. G-slash-S
00:12:58at that time it was a G-slash-S for Galanda Strassa
00:13:02on the lands and on the street.
00:13:06So that's where the GS
00:13:10story begins and
00:13:14in 1983 I think Hubert Auriol
00:13:18won the Paris Dakar on such a motorcycle
00:13:22so it wasn't a look, it was a function
00:13:26and when I went to
00:13:30Europe to have the tour
00:13:34at Continental Tire my host
00:13:38Arnold von Rudenbeck said the new BMW
00:13:42is a gift to German salarymen. They are
00:13:46oppressed by knowing everything that's going to happen
00:13:50in their lives. When they can afford to marry, when they can afford
00:13:54to own a car and what kind of coffin they'll be buried in.
00:13:58And by having a GS
00:14:02motorcycle such a man while
00:14:06conforming in every respect because it's the correct thing
00:14:10could say in the back of his mind one day
00:14:14I could leave. I could take this
00:14:18thing to Africa. I could live
00:14:22free. And I think that remains
00:14:26important for all motorcyclists.
00:14:30For any luxury market, any
00:14:34non-essential motorcycle market,
00:14:38what I mean is where the motorcycle is non-essential to our
00:14:42being, our need.
00:14:46You're really matching self-image. What is the picture
00:14:50you have of your free self and what are you doing? How do you match your
00:14:54self-image? For a huge portion of Americans,
00:14:58we think of V-Twin touring bikes, Harley
00:15:02Davidson's first, Indians making some inroads there
00:15:06doing a great job supporting their brand with racing
00:15:10and doing other things. But you have this vision of yourself
00:15:14and how do you fulfill that with the motorcycle and what does it trigger? It's love
00:15:18first and then everything else can be a secondary or
00:15:22second justification or the thirteenth. Oh, it gets good mileage. I can
00:15:26use it to commute to work. On fine days, yes.
00:15:30Well, I feel that
00:15:34each of us is entitled to his or her emotions.
00:15:38They can't be criticized. Your emotions are what they are.
00:15:42And if you need an anchor to windward
00:15:46and a motorcycle supplies that,
00:15:50I'm not going to criticize that person by pointing
00:15:54out, oh, have you ridden it to Patagonia yet?
00:15:58Because yes, many times
00:16:02in imagination. And if that helps
00:16:06a person to cruise through life,
00:16:10that's got to be a good thing. It is a good thing.
00:16:14Think of a V4 Panigale.
00:16:18Who can ride that? Some of us can. A few people.
00:16:22Who can extract the most out of it? And if you don't take it to a track,
00:16:26you're not extracting the most out of it. But what do you have a piece of?
00:16:30You have a piece of MotoGP. You feel a part of that.
00:16:34And you get a taste, just even of the hint of what's
00:16:38going on at the end of the front straight at Mugello. The link is there.
00:16:42And it's magnificent. And that's what you get from a GS.
00:16:46You watch that 80s rally footage. It's just magnificent.
00:16:50It's just incredible. And all the people who are out there
00:16:54just pounding the things. World travelers going across
00:16:58Iceland and riding to Patagonia.
00:17:02The Darien Gap.
00:17:06It's just amazing.
00:17:10So this whole thing
00:17:14has grown
00:17:18around this classic engine architecture.
00:17:22And of course we've heard the criticism endlessly that Japanese
00:17:26motorcycles are commodities that have no
00:17:30soul. And I think that BMW
00:17:34carefully considered all sorts of
00:17:38cylinder arrangements and engine architecture.
00:17:42And they stayed with what they had.
00:17:46There are some good reasons. One of the reasons, of course, is emotional.
00:17:50There is soul. There is a certain look. There is a sound. There is a
00:17:54vibration. That big motor, the left
00:17:58cylinder is a little bit offset to the front
00:18:02so that as each pair of pistons stops
00:18:06at top dead center, it goes this way a little bit.
00:18:10And when it goes the other stroke, it goes this way a little bit.
00:18:14So for you Spotify folks, he's showing it.
00:18:18Oscillating around the yaw axis.
00:18:22If you knife and forked them and they were in perfect line,
00:18:26you wouldn't get that
00:18:30what do you call that?
00:18:34That type of vibration.
00:18:38That oscillation. And you wouldn't have that feeling through the bars, which is
00:18:42pretty nice at lower RPM. It gets a little fuzzy when you're
00:18:46revving the daylights out of it. But they fixed that later.
00:18:50They attenuated it later.
00:18:54Because pistons kept getting heavier
00:18:58in relation to the vehicle. And Honda
00:19:02had to address secondary vibration in the inline 4 in 1997
00:19:06with the Blackbird. And BMW
00:19:10had to address this eventually when the pistons were just
00:19:14becoming tremendously large.
00:19:18Closing in on 4 inches.
00:19:22Compromises had to be made in order
00:19:26to preserve this engine type. For example, the
00:19:30Slash 5 of 1969, the pushrods had to go
00:19:34all the way to the central plane. Because the
00:19:38camshaft was central. So there were long, heavy pushrods.
00:19:42And as they worked to raise performance
00:19:46to please those sales and promotion people
00:19:50who were working so hard,
00:19:54they had to confront that. And there have been
00:19:58many steps along the way to bring us
00:20:02to the modern 4 valve, double overhead cam,
00:20:06shift cam engine.
00:20:10Everyone has to deal with this. Because we know that we can
00:20:14get, what would we call it, brochure
00:20:18horsepower by just leaving the intake valves open later.
00:20:22But then there's going to be a big flat spot.
00:20:26So, okay, forget leaving them open later.
00:20:30Can we get more performance with a wide power band?
00:20:34With 4 valves? Oh,
00:20:38but our engine is air cooled. It's going to
00:20:42stretch the material between the paired exhaust valves and there will be a crack
00:20:46there. No worries, we'll drill a hole and circulate
00:20:50oil through there and keep that region cool enough
00:20:54to be stable. No valve seat
00:20:58distortion, no cracking, no leakage, no problem.
00:21:02The fabled exhaust bridge crack. Yes.
00:21:06Look out, I'll say asperities.
00:21:10There you go. 80% of
00:21:14podcasts, asperities.
00:21:18The thing is that really
00:21:22BMW had a tremendous asset given them by
00:21:26Oxfries, and that is that the engine is close to
00:21:30self-balancing. And indeed, if you were to
00:21:34fold those cylinders, which are at 180 degrees,
00:21:38up to 90 degrees,
00:21:42you would have the engine architecture of Ducati.
00:21:46They can, with nothing but crank counterweights,
00:21:50completely balance primary shaking force. Which means
00:21:54Ducati went one way with that,
00:21:58which was toward tremendous RPM. Some of those
00:22:02gigantic twins, like 116mm bore
00:22:06revving to 12,000. Please.
00:22:10I mean, that's a bigger bore than a big block Chevy.
00:22:14BMW has kept to moderate RPM
00:22:18because they want their motorcycle to please
00:22:22all of its buyers. And many of the traditional buyers
00:22:26want a gentlemanly motorcycle, but with
00:22:30modern performance. So that's a
00:22:34different set of pressures on design.
00:22:38So they have more or less kept around 7,000
00:22:42RPM. It's creeping up, but it's still in the neighborhood.
00:22:46Four valves, topical oil cooling.
00:22:50Eventually, water-cooled heads.
00:22:54But they said that even with the water-cooled heads,
00:22:5866% of the engine's total
00:23:02heat removal is direct to air, by means
00:23:06of the fins that remain there. Because if they took away the fins,
00:23:10you know there would be complaints.
00:23:14Motorcycle engines got to have fins.
00:23:18So all these changes have been
00:23:22added to a basic concept from, what, 1923
00:23:26or so. And even before
00:23:30that, it dated back to 1897, when Carl Benz
00:23:34created the first flat twin, the Contra.
00:23:38Called so-called because of
00:23:42its pistons making that contrary motion, the
00:23:46boxer motion.
00:23:50I think that it's delightful that they have
00:23:54kept to their primary
00:23:58motivation, which is to combine the classic
00:24:02motorcycle that they've always built
00:24:06with modern requirements. When it became time
00:24:10for electronic gadgetry,
00:24:14I think it was 2013 that they added
00:24:18cornering ABS, which meant that they had to have
00:24:22an IMU. And
00:24:26when the people at MIT's
00:24:30various specialist laboratories, that you
00:24:34can't get into because they're guarded by soldiers,
00:24:38developed inertial guidance.
00:24:42The unit weighed approximately 100 pounds, and it cost hundreds of thousands
00:24:46of dollars, and it had spinning gyros in it, and
00:24:50high-precision accelerometers and all kinds of computing power.
00:24:54And that's been reduced down to a little $100 unit,
00:24:58such that athletic training
00:25:02outfits attach them to people's wrists, elbows, shoulders,
00:25:06knees, hips, and feet, in order to map out
00:25:10exactly what they're doing wrong.
00:25:14And all these things
00:25:18that Mach 3's probably never dreamed of,
00:25:22although you don't know, are now
00:25:26added to this basic, originally very
00:25:30conservative concept. And here it is,
00:25:34a quarter of the way into the new century, still at it.
00:25:38Now, at one point, when they introduced the K
00:25:42models, it was believed, well,
00:25:46with deep regret, we're going to have to put away
00:25:50the flat twin, because it just isn't modern.
00:25:54They wouldn't let them.
00:25:58It was a foolish proposal.
00:26:02And Harley-Davidson went through the same thing with NOVA,
00:26:06which in Spanish, I'm told, means, doesn't go.
00:26:10Yeah, no va. No go.
00:26:14And they
00:26:18laid on Porsche engineers to design this thing.
00:26:22They were going to compete with the Japanese. Fortunately, at the last
00:26:26moment, that Minneapolis
00:26:30advertising firm said, wait a minute, you guys have something
00:26:34that no one else has.
00:26:38You have resident in the minds of all motorcyclists
00:26:42an identity. Don't burn it.
00:26:46Oh, I imagine the same conversations happened at Porsche when the proposal
00:26:50was made to switch to the V8 and do the 928.
00:26:54That was the future of Porsche.
00:26:58And imagine a world without 911s.
00:27:02The 914, the folks Porsche,
00:27:06that people just won't look at.
00:27:10Cold following. As per anything, there's a cold following.
00:27:14The problem is that modernizing
00:27:18and getting on the trend, getting, pardon me, on trend
00:27:22are powerful motivations, because we see
00:27:26in so many enterprises that this is necessary for their advancement.
00:27:30But you must not heat your house
00:27:34by burning your image.
00:27:38BMW has a powerful image. They've had the sense
00:27:42to keep it.
00:27:46Absolutely.
00:27:50They've had, they do great work in other realms.
00:27:54We have, I rode the F900 GS, the latest
00:27:58iteration of their parallel twin adventure bike.
00:28:02What a sensible and great motorcycle. They did a lot of work on the
00:28:06suspension and some other changes. It's magnificent.
00:28:10But it does not
00:28:14convey BMW-ness in the same way.
00:28:18The models I've spent the most mileage on during my career
00:28:22was R 1150 GS, which circa
00:28:262000 was just about the right bike for the
00:28:30segment. Very long by comparison to now.
00:28:34It had telelever.
00:28:38It was definitely capable off-road,
00:28:42but it was very much, looking back at it now, it was very much
00:28:46like a sport tour that could go in dirt and be competent there.
00:28:502004 came, and they moved
00:28:54the weight forward. They kicked the horsepower up.
00:28:58A launch, yeah.
00:29:02Very much a lightweight motorcycle, and riding that
00:29:06off-road in South Africa at the press launch, it was just a revelation.
00:29:10The confidence that you had in the front, before the front end was very far
00:29:14away from you, and you sort of felt like you were reaching
00:29:18somewhere out there was the front, in the dirt especially, mostly
00:29:22in the dirt. But that 04,
00:29:26it even encouraged you to jump off of water
00:29:30bars and jump bumps in the trail, and you didn't get necessarily
00:29:34that feeling with the previous GS. And then in 2013,
00:29:38kicking it up, power went up again, they lightened the crank
00:29:42quite a bit, which they later added weight, because it was like
00:29:46they went a little too zealous on the
00:29:50engine inertia. They found that people actually
00:29:54wanted something that didn't stall as easily,
00:29:58because you were riding it in tight situations
00:30:02and so forth. Well, I went
00:30:06to their test center in the south of France
00:30:10in 2019, and they put a lot
00:30:14of effort into talking about their new
00:30:18product design and testing facilities,
00:30:22because they said, we have found
00:30:26that our rising sales curve is being
00:30:30driven by a widening variety of new
00:30:34models and updated old models.
00:30:38So, the old notion of producing
00:30:42Prius from 1999
00:30:46to the present day in the same shape
00:30:50was not working for them.
00:30:54So, they have had to develop automated methods of
00:30:58gathering huge amounts of data from every
00:31:02test ride and test rig, so that that
00:31:06data can be reduced to form that
00:31:10human engineers can look at and say, oh, you can see what's happening
00:31:14here, and we need to do this in order to optimize that.
00:31:18They often call it the data ocean, and then
00:31:22you need your tableau, or you need something else to, and then all the engineers,
00:31:26all the statisticians, and all that to
00:31:30make that into something we can make sense of.
00:31:34Yep, and occasionally BMW does
00:31:38strange things, like the C1 scooter,
00:31:42which seems to me was priced at $13,000, and I
00:31:46think that it's well...
00:31:50The C1 was a scooter with a roof. It had a roof and had a windshield wiper.
00:31:54And they were like, hey, man, you can ride this any time you want.
00:31:58What I respect about BMW is, like Honda,
00:32:02they really play some bets, and I think what
00:32:06BMW has done exceptionally well, which you've talked about
00:32:10a few minutes ago, was
00:32:14hang on to their spirit and their soul, but also
00:32:18having the freedom to do other things, and I think internally they've had a lot of battles.
00:32:22I know they have, because they've been describing it.
00:32:26Imagine in 1987 saying, okay, BMW
00:32:30is actually going to build an inline four-cylinder superbike with a
00:32:34telescopic inverted fork, and it's going to make 200 horsepower,
00:32:38or just present an inline four. Don't even make
00:32:42the astronomical claims. Like, nope. I mean, you couldn't convince...
00:32:46If you went to BMW in 1987 and said, come on, you guys,
00:32:50what's with these freaking turn signals? Because the traditional BMWs
00:32:54all had a button on each handlebar, and you lifted your
00:32:58thumb up, and it was logical. It was, no, this is
00:33:02the logical way to do turn signals. And you just couldn't
00:33:06convince them to get rid of it, and there was a lot of wrestling of all of
00:33:10that traditional stuff.
00:33:14Telelever is a better front suspension because it moves the load
00:33:18path, and it keeps the distinction down, and it does things that improve
00:33:22the riding experience. Well, some people don't
00:33:26want telelever. If you're building a superbike, we can't have telelever.
00:33:30They were just things that were traditional, and you had an
00:33:34old school group, and you had the new school group, and they were duking it out
00:33:38quite a bit. Well, there's nothing wrong with that because
00:33:42sometimes compromise enables
00:33:46everyone to move forward.
00:33:50Tension can also increase your creativity.
00:33:54What am I going to do?
00:33:58What am I going to tell those vice presidents tomorrow?
00:34:02When it comes to
00:34:06telelever, I think it basically does what
00:34:10was
00:34:14done for Moto Guzzi by racing, namely
00:34:18they swung the brake caliper on its
00:34:22own pivot, and they arranged
00:34:26so that the torque from the brake caliper and the torque from the gear case
00:34:30were reacted to the frame.
00:34:32Clarifying for the audience, I was talking about telelever,
00:34:36which is an A-arm, roughly
00:34:40at the same height as the lower front
00:34:44triple clamp on the fork, and that was their telelever, and then
00:34:48paralever got rid of the traditional up and down movement
00:34:52of the pinion climbing the ring gear
00:34:56at the back because there was no force to counteract that, so when you put the torque
00:35:00into the driveshaft under acceleration, it should
00:35:04want to lift, and it did, and yes, Kevin's standing up, his head
00:35:08disappeared from the screen, dear Spotify, and then when you rolled the throttle off
00:35:12the bike would squat. It can be quite comical
00:35:16when they do it in their little dog and pony show.
00:35:20Well, it's interesting because the inherent design
00:35:24had problems. Well, they weren't problems because you weren't making
00:35:28100 horsepower, so it really wasn't a problem, but it was there, and then
00:35:32as you progressed, it became a problem, and if you take that
00:35:36to the logical extension, an internal combustion engine is actually
00:35:40kind of a design problem for a motorcycle in a lot of ways in terms of rideability
00:35:44because an electric motorcycle overcomes all the
00:35:48quirks that we're compensating for on an internal combustion engine, such as
00:35:52idle and decoupling the engine from the wheel so that we can
00:35:56change a gear having a clutch. Having six ratios.
00:36:00Six ratios. You can benefit from ratios on an
00:36:04electric bike if you're trying to race, but really on a street
00:36:08ride, you can just do whatever you want. You just pick a gear ratio
00:36:12on electric and you just turn it. Point is, BMW had the
00:36:16platform, and it is part of the brand, and
00:36:20they have just, as you do, you whack them all.
00:36:24What we're finding, these things are really, really standing up now that we have 75
00:36:28horsepower or whatever it is, and the squat on decel is horrible
00:36:32and all of that, and they just
00:36:36whack away at it, and what do we have now? Great motorcycles.
00:36:40GS is amazing. I mean, it's very much not a high-performance
00:36:44dirt bike. Even the biggest KTM Adventure bike,
00:36:48it still has sort of a, it's narrower, and it has
00:36:52a dirt bike soul, even though it's
00:36:561,200-1,300 cc, it still has a mid-corner pivot
00:37:00with your leg out, and the GS is a lot closer to that
00:37:04than it's ever been, and it is, but it hits a different target.
00:37:08It has a different feeling,
00:37:12and you really do feel
00:37:16like you can ride to the horizon. It's not about getting there
00:37:20fast. It's about being able to get there. For sure.
00:37:24For sure, and in a
00:37:28easy way, like a marathon runner
00:37:32is not doing a 10-second
00:37:36100-yard dash. I mean, they're getting close, but the point
00:37:40is they're picking a pace. You're picking the mountain pace, or you're picking
00:37:44the dirt road pace, and you're going to be doing this a long time. That's kind of the
00:37:48mental state that you get when you point it toward a dirt road.
00:37:52And to give this motorcycle torque
00:37:56everywhere has been a steady progression.
00:38:00It was not easy to
00:38:04do this with those long pushrods and the heavy
00:38:08pushrod and rocker arm valve train, but
00:38:12they eventually canned that
00:38:16and they put four valves in its place. Well, four valves can
00:38:20flow the same air as two great big valves,
00:38:24but with less open time, which gives you automatically
00:38:28a broader power band, because the less valve timing you have,
00:38:32the more your engine is like an air pump, and the less it is
00:38:36like an organ pipe that only plays one note.
00:38:40For example, Rob Muzzy, Mr. Superbike,
00:38:44said, the harder you tune on a four-stroke,
00:38:48the more it acts like a two-stroke.
00:38:52That's because when you have to rely
00:38:56on things like exhaust and intake resonance and all sorts of things that are
00:39:00time-dependent, your power band shrinks
00:39:04down. BMW, to preserve all of their qualities
00:39:08for all of their fanciers, had to go the other way.
00:39:12They had to have torque everywhere. So today we have
00:39:16four valves, double overhead cam, which means lightweight
00:39:20valve train that can open and close rapidly,
00:39:24allowing the use of short
00:39:28timing, and their shift cam. Shift cam
00:39:32has two different sets of profiles. So you have
00:39:36the high-speed and the low-speed, so that it's like an
00:39:40RZ350 that had the
00:39:44variable-eyelid exhaust ports, and it had a
00:39:48low-speed nature and a high-speed nature.
00:39:52That's a good thing, because
00:39:56for long-distance travel, for easy
00:40:00riding, for riding in a variety of circumstances,
00:40:04you need torque everywhere. Good, strong torque.
00:40:08So, it's come.
00:40:16I'd say a watershed moment was, what, 94?
00:40:20R1100GS? That was a biggie.
00:40:24Four valves. Yes, in order to do the
00:40:28four valves, they had to put the... or circulate oil between
00:40:32the valves, exhaust valves. And then David Robb was, the designer
00:40:36David Robb, was around this time, and that's, I think, when we got the
00:40:40winking, the one big headlight
00:40:44offset, the asymmetrical front. And that's been
00:40:48an interesting thing to talk to BMW folks about, because, you know, they've
00:40:52had asymmetrical, and people complained, and then
00:40:56they took asymmetrical away recently, and people complained.
00:41:00This is a really weird old reference, but
00:41:04there was a band called TSOL, it was
00:41:08a punk band, and the lead singer was complaining in an interview.
00:41:12He said, God, you know, we make an album, and we go on tour,
00:41:16and it was our breakthrough album, and we went on tour, and it was great. And then we came out
00:41:20with another album, and then everybody hates the
00:41:24album, and we go on stage, and they scream for all the songs from the first album.
00:41:28And then the second album's out, and then we do the third album, and we go on,
00:41:32and everybody hates the album, and they scream for the second album, which they
00:41:36previously hated. So it's not
00:41:40an easy job trying to predict the future when you're designing
00:41:44a bike five years ago, four years ago, to what we have now.
00:41:48You're trying to make all these predictions about what's going to happen, and what's happening
00:41:52to, I mean, all the influences. What's the exchange rate? We're getting
00:41:56parts from all over the world. What's the exchange rate? How do we hedge against the exchange rate?
00:42:00It just stacks up. Oh, suddenly
00:42:04we have a pandemic, and no one can get
00:42:08plutonium.
00:42:12The very next thing they had was
00:42:16an energy crisis caused by the pipeline blow-up.
00:42:20I didn't realize that it was such a big deal, but people in Europe refer
00:42:24to the energy crisis, which was caused by that
00:42:28break in that natural gas supply. A lot of
00:42:32German firms are off-shoring their manufacturing
00:42:36to guess where? Thailand.
00:42:40Yeah, big manufacturing center. Harley's had a lot of controversy
00:42:44about building bikes in Thailand recently.
00:42:48It's hard when you build your entire personality
00:42:52and brand recognition on
00:42:56nationalism. Yes, it really is nationalism.
00:43:00Proudness. We can be proud that
00:43:04you can't say anymore that, for Harley,
00:43:08you can't say, oh, we were proud that people named Smith could make whatever, because
00:43:12the entire company is full of engineers and
00:43:16software people from India and Bangladesh and South
00:43:20America and Brazil.
00:43:24It's diversity.
00:43:28You have this nationalism. It's
00:43:32just what happened with the Bonneville. When the Bonneville was introduced,
00:43:36the Triumph Bonneville in 2000-2001, I was at the factory
00:43:40and there they were, plasmonitride in the cranks right over there
00:43:44across the room, and there's the assembly line of them dropping those
00:43:48cranks into the cases with the gear sets, and there was an English motorcycle
00:43:52built in England, and then they offshored that stuff to Thailand, because Thailand's
00:43:56a great place to build things. And there was
00:44:00a lot of upheaval and upset, but at the end of the day,
00:44:04motorcycles are global. Even your motorcycle that is
00:44:08air quote American, your Indian or your Harley Davidson,
00:44:12the foreign content, foreign source content
00:44:16is very large. You just have to deal with it.
00:44:20It's just how it is. Maybe we can make some changes,
00:44:24but anyway. BMW will still say that
00:44:28their cruisers made in Berlin. It was a big deal that they're making the
00:44:32R18 in Berlin. They wanted to put a stamp on it.
00:44:38That was the Brahmo aircraft engine
00:44:42factory in World War II.
00:44:46But of course, any factory that's been around for a long
00:44:50time has had many occupants.
00:44:54Trouble is, today, some of them have no occupant.
00:44:58But I think we can be
00:45:02optimistic, because it looks like BMW has a powerful
00:45:06process for generating these new models. Mark mentioned the
00:45:10one, the parallel twin
00:45:14bike, and those models
00:45:18will be offered as the market develops.
00:45:22It sort of pays in. You
00:45:26make a prediction, you gamble on a new model, it hits
00:45:30the market, and it starts to send you feedback.
00:45:34If you don't pay any attention to the feedback, like the English in
00:45:381966, we don't like bright colors on
00:45:42motorcycles, so you can't have those colors.
00:45:46That's one way to go out of business. But if you pay attention
00:45:50and you update and you offer new models that are closer to the
00:45:54mark, why, you might succeed.
00:45:58But going to business school doesn't enable you to predict that someone's
00:46:02going to blow up a gas pipeline.
00:46:06We live in a pretty unpredictable world, and I think BMW
00:46:10are doing well to adapt and keep on adapting.
00:46:14I want to say it's always been unpredictable.
00:46:18That's the point. Sometimes people say, oh, things were so simple
00:46:2210 years ago, 40 years ago.
00:46:26In 1950, things were so simple.
00:46:30It was just a simpler, slower world.
00:46:34Well, I don't know. Polio kind of sucked.
00:46:38Pre-penicillin, oh, the 30s, the 20s, whatever it was.
00:46:42Gosh, we've solved a lot of issues. There's a lot fewer things that we have to
00:46:46worry about day to day than once we did.
00:46:50People say, oh, we're all so busy now. I like to say to those people,
00:46:54and they weren't busy in 1943 working the graveyard shift
00:46:58trying to get the kids to school.
00:47:02A friend of mine, my friend Ray Nerlich,
00:47:06he's a good friend, and he's a motorcycle collector
00:47:10and Jaguar restorer and an amazing mechanic and machinist
00:47:14and engine builder and many different things. He bought
00:47:18the Roddy Roddenberg Triumph race bike.
00:47:22It's a pre-war, it's a bronze head. I think it's a bronze head, but it's this
00:47:26magnificent Triumph race bike.
00:47:30He has all the paperwork and correspondence that goes with it.
00:47:34Roddy is writing letters to England during World
00:47:38War II because he wants the high
00:47:42performance valves or such and so camshaft.
00:47:46There's a letter in there, and it's so English. It's beautiful. It's on Triumph
00:47:50letterhead, and it says, Dear
00:47:54Mr. Roddenberg, we
00:47:58acknowledge your inquiry regarding the such and so camshaft.
00:48:02Things are a bit hectic at the moment.
00:48:06It's the Blitz, right?
00:48:10It was so understated and beautiful. He got his camshafts later.
00:48:14It was fine. My dad was at
00:48:18college with Roddy Roddenberg.
00:48:22He quit to go motorcycle racing. Good man.
00:48:26I accidentally graduated
00:48:30and then I got a job in motorcycling.
00:48:34Here we are.
00:48:38We're up to 145 horsepower claimed
00:48:42and 110 pound-feet of torque
00:48:46at a pretty nice 6,500 RPM.
00:48:50We have yet to sling that 1,300 on
00:48:54a dyno. I don't think. We may have done it.
00:48:58106.5 millimeter bore, 73 stroke
00:49:02on a flat twin. When you're trying to keep it narrow, you can't
00:49:06throw a four-inch stroke at it. Not that anyone would.
00:49:10You're better off with a big bore
00:49:14and a short stroke for many reasons, but particularly in this layout, we don't want to
00:49:18get stuck between the trees.
00:49:22Which is a real thing. You got to slow her down.
00:49:26Think about
00:49:30elk walking through the woods.
00:49:34They have to turn their head sideways to get those antlers through.
00:49:38We've done it many times in testing. We did a thing
00:49:42in 2006. We had Gary Jones,
00:49:46legendary first U.S. motocross champion
00:49:50worked in product development. He was one of those guys
00:49:54like the old flat trackers and
00:49:58guys working on their own bikes, racing and building their own pipes.
00:50:02He was working in motorcycle development, building pipes, oval section
00:50:06mufflers that made more power than the round SuperTrap.
00:50:10SuperTrap didn't want to know, so he just made his own round ones that they marketed
00:50:14through the great old company White Brothers. Anyway, we took all these bikes.
00:50:18We took a variety of bikes. At this time, it was the HP2,
00:50:22which was their lightweight, high performance, flat twin
00:50:26limited production when they were doing that at the time. It was a very cool bike.
00:50:30We had a 990, probably a 990
00:50:34KTM and then a Husqvarna 610
00:50:38and an XR650. We took them up into the mountains near Yosemite and were bashing
00:50:42around through rock fields and everything.
00:50:46We had to stop through this rock field and you had to ride up to the rocks,
00:50:50tip the bike, turn it, and
00:50:54drop the cylinder in the diagonal and move it
00:50:58forward and lean it the other way and get the cylinder to go around the other rock, these offset
00:51:02rocks. We were like, well, note to self, we're not
00:51:06doing tight woods racing with this thing in the East Coast. It's very good
00:51:10in the desert. That day, we took that bike onto
00:51:14basically a drain reservoir. They had beaches that were
00:51:18acres of flat sand that was moist.
00:51:22Oh my god, what a day on that.
00:51:26That bike came into its own. It was around 100 horsepower.
00:51:30It was very lightweight for what it was. It was
00:51:34sort of just a giant enduro. It was magnificent.
00:51:38You could lean it over until the cylinders were dragging in that sand and we had
00:51:42knobbies. We had big chunk knobbies on them, TKCs.
00:51:46You could just roll the throttle and you had that flat twin
00:51:50drone. The 180 basically sounds like it's a 360
00:51:54essentially. It sounds like a British 360 parallel twin. It's a sound
00:51:58that has resonated for different models in different ways over
00:52:02many, many, many decades. It was amazing.
00:52:06It was absolutely wonderful.
00:52:10Well, that fellow that you described
00:52:14making all those changes
00:52:18and modifications is a latter day Rüdiger
00:52:22Gutscher. Gutscher designed
00:52:26transmissions for BMW in that era of the
00:52:3060s and 70s. He designed the telescopic fork, I think.
00:52:34I'm not sure that he was hair professor
00:52:38or doctor. I think he was a civilian
00:52:42who knew how to do stuff. Yeah, that's great. Those guys
00:52:46make the world go around. They sure do.
00:52:50My current boss jokes
00:52:54about being a college dropout.
00:52:58It's like, what is this for? I need to get something done.
00:53:02Edwin Land was the same way.
00:53:06He wanted to get something done.
00:53:10Well, it's nice in our current
00:53:14corporate environment, our owners, Octane, the job descriptions generally say
00:53:18XX year degree or equivalent experience.
00:53:22We respect the folks that are out there doing stuff on their own.
00:53:26Some people are 14 years old and they
00:53:30just want to code. Some people are 14 years old and they want to
00:53:34make their mini bike run better. They start going, well, I don't know. I could
00:53:38bend this pipe. Dad's got a torch or whatever it is.
00:53:42Even if Dad doesn't have a torch, you go buy one. This year's
00:53:46MotoGP hotshot, Pedro Acosta, said
00:53:50recently, I'm thinking that
00:53:54we need some guys at trackside who
00:53:58don't necessarily have a university degree.
00:54:02Now, has he heard of Kelker others?
00:54:06I think it was Martin Adams.
00:54:10You know, you give the stuff to the
00:54:14farmers. That was Gary
00:54:18Mathers. He says the engineers
00:54:22are great. We love the engineers. They go off and they do this thing and then they hand us
00:54:26a motorcycle and they have all these ideas. But we're the farmers.
00:54:30We get the equipment and the rain's coming and we
00:54:34got to harvest that hay right now. How are we going to do that?
00:54:38The baler's broken. That's beautiful.
00:54:42It's very true. You've got to have
00:54:46practical experience. The best engineers are the ones that are
00:54:50cutting the steering head, if you can find them.
00:54:54The difference that you'll see at trackside is when it's
00:54:58about time to go to the grid and a light rain comes down,
00:55:02the people in
00:55:06contact with reality start putting the rain tires on or the intermediates.
00:55:10And another person that I knew started picking up the tools
00:55:14and wiping the water off of them and putting them in a toolbox
00:55:18as if that was his responsibility.
00:55:22No, we will pound on the tools with hammers
00:55:26if that's what's necessary to get this motorcycle on the starting line.
00:55:30The starting line is the bottom line.
00:55:34So, yeah, there's a place for fellas that
00:55:38don't have a university degree. They have
00:55:42experience and knowledge.
00:55:46Well, I think the GS and RT,
00:55:52the opposed twin touring bike, have always been
00:55:56the anchors of BMW's sales.
00:56:00The RT used to be number one and then the GS
00:56:04has supplanted it. Typically, it's their biggest seller.
00:56:08With 25% of sales, yeah.
00:56:12It does seem to represent the soul of BMW.
00:56:16They have the freedom
00:56:20being a technical company, they have the freedom to explore
00:56:24superbikes, which, holy cow, look at Top Rack and his
00:56:28big consecutive win streak. They finally put it all together
00:56:32and the street bikes, the M that we dynoed recently was
00:56:36190 horsepower. And even when that bike debuted,
00:56:40it was a real shot over the bow of the Japanese
00:56:44makers who were dominating with liter bikes.
00:56:48And you look at Ducati, we talked about Ducati's permanent
00:56:52state of revolution and just saying, well, we need a V4.
00:56:56That's what the superbike has to be now. We've taken the V-Twin as a
00:57:00ultimate performance machine to its logical conclusion.
00:57:04We're not abandoning the V-Twin. We still have that as a part of our
00:57:08brand identity and we have a lot of great V-Twin motorcycles, but
00:57:12we're here to cut wood and this saw runs harder.
00:57:16It's very cool. And Harley, too.
00:57:20I think when you look
00:57:24at the adventure bike, look at what Harley did.
00:57:28They came into a market that was mature. They applied
00:57:32their engineering expertise and their research.
00:57:36We're not talking about a bunch of guys
00:57:40with a t-shirt with their sleeve ripped off
00:57:44working on boring out the cylinders bigger
00:57:48or whatever. There is a
00:57:52very American heart to the company,
00:57:56but it's also people who road race.
00:58:00I think those new motors like Indian Challenger and
00:58:04the Harley
00:58:08New Direction are
00:58:12international designs. When you look at the execution
00:58:16of those machines, it is international. You don't
00:58:20look at it and say, oh, they have 20 screws
00:58:24when four would do the job. It must be English.
00:58:28There's a proliferation of
00:58:32heat shrink fits. It must be German.
00:58:36It's an international design and there's a way of doing things
00:58:40now that I call international. That's what those things are.
00:58:44I think that's admirable because it means that the
00:58:48people in those engineering departments weren't told
00:58:52don't do anything that lies
00:58:56too far off the well-trodden path.
00:59:00Freedom to explore. They're doing it now. It's cool.
00:59:04Think of Ducati, Harley Davidson, and BMW in terms of
00:59:08continuity and
00:59:12tradition, hanging on to tradition, but they're all
00:59:16expressing themselves with the freedom to explore. You have a GS
00:59:20which benefits from S1000RR, M1000RR,
00:59:24all the research with finger followers
00:59:28and cam profiles and IMUs and everything that
00:59:32adds up to a motorcycle that just makes you feel better riding it
00:59:36farther or at the end of the day.
00:59:40That's the thing I've always felt about the GS is
00:59:44that it's easy to ride when you're
00:59:48exhausted. You can still ride it
00:59:52and I think that's a great test for an adventure bike.
00:59:56If you are completely ass kicked and you've fallen down 50 times
01:00:00and maybe you weren't in the best shape of your life to start with and you can still
01:00:04get up and ride that bike and manage that motorcycle up the last hill
01:00:08before your campsite or your hotel or you're whipping out the credit card,
01:00:12whatever it is, I think that's what's great about the GS.
01:00:16Ride as fast as you can, but also survive.
01:00:20Now, it's still possible for
01:00:24accidents to happen and I think for the best reasons
01:00:28Harley Davidson decided to build LiveWire,
01:00:32which is a well-engineered, well-functioning
01:00:36product, which at the time was the fastest accelerating
01:00:40production Harley Davidson ever built.
01:00:44But for the faithful, it looked like
01:00:48Harley Davidson's identity was on fire and
01:00:52burning with a magnesium whiteness
01:00:56and they quickly separated themselves from it.
01:01:00That's not working. We've made a mistake. Let's correct it.
01:01:04And we don't know what's happening next.
01:01:08Just as the auto people say, we're spending 40%
01:01:12of R&D on contingency and engineering. What if
01:01:16the EPA wants this? What if the safety people want that?
01:01:20We have to be ready. So they're building all this stuff.
01:01:24And Harley's contingency was to build an electric motorcycle.
01:01:28And that was a wise decision,
01:01:32but perceived by their market
01:01:36not wise. Well, I think what we're seeing in motorcycling,
01:01:40this is a separate podcast, but what we're seeing in motorcycling is
01:01:44that the electric motorcycle market is not the
01:01:48traditional motorcycle market and it's a different person. And so splitting
01:01:52LiveWire off
01:01:56is a smart move in the sense that you're marketing to a completely different
01:02:00person. It's not somebody lighting fires
01:02:04in a giant V-twin and going boom, boom, boom and flames out the tailpipe.
01:02:08It is a completely different market. And also the total addressable
01:02:12market for a motorcycle-like electric
01:02:16for a full-size, I'm going to replace my Yamaha
01:02:20MT-07 is
01:02:24it's in the low thousands. In 2023,
01:02:28I can't explain the fourth quarter for
01:02:32LiveWire, but in 2023, it was something like
01:02:3633 units in the first quarter, 66 units in the second
01:02:40quarter, something again, double digit in the third quarter. And then somehow
01:02:44in the fourth quarter, there was 514 LiveWires.
01:02:48And that was the issue I had at the time in the sense
01:02:52that like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. We're going to lead the electrification.
01:02:56That's what Harley was saying, but it was challenging
01:03:00in the respect that the total addressable market really
01:03:04was so small. And you're dealing with a company that
01:03:08made a million sportsters with great
01:03:12success on no technical merit.
01:03:16They made a million, 1.2 million from 2003
01:03:20to the last sportster, something in that range
01:03:24on no technical merit. No, it was an emotional
01:03:28motorcycle. And they're good motorcycles. I'm not saying it's a bad motorcycle,
01:03:32but I mean, if you want to go up against an MT-07
01:03:36that weighs 400 pounds, it's like really easy to handle.
01:03:40It's different. Like the Harley's not hard to handle, but it has its
01:03:44own thing and that you're kind of accommodating
01:03:48that a little bit more than an MT-07. But anyway,
01:03:52we are so far away from a GS right now.
01:03:56The point was freedom to explore. And you've got a really
01:04:00strong traditional core that people love, but you also have
01:04:04the freedom to explore. And Harley Davidson came out with an adventure bike
01:04:08that was successful in its first year, showing that all the engineering that was
01:04:12actually going in to the air-cooled bikes that it's very easy to ignore
01:04:16because it looks like some version of 1941.
01:04:20Yes. It's just very
01:04:24interesting. And BMW's done a beautiful job balancing all the
01:04:28things and making their experiments and doing things like an inline-six that's
01:04:32magnificent. Keeping their identity. Keeping their identity.
01:04:36And nourishing it. Yeah. That's essential
01:04:40because the British motorcycle industry had a powerful
01:04:44identity and they burned it up.
01:04:48So everybody beware.
01:04:52Yep. So good job, BMW.
01:04:56We've got a full test on our 1300GS coming up
01:05:00or maybe up now because we're recording this for the future.
01:05:04Thanks everyone for listening to the podcast.
01:05:08Hop in the comments. They're as good as ever.
01:05:12We have some very interesting
01:05:16questions coming on and we'll address some of those in future podcasts.
01:05:20Maybe we'll bring some tools into the mix. I've thought about
01:05:24Kevin getting a little aside before we get going
01:05:28or in the middle of the show. What's your favorite tool this week?
01:05:32I got one. I got one too. I've got many favorite tools.
01:05:36I dropped one of my favorite tools recently and broke it. Now I have a new favorite tool.
01:05:40Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time.