Bmw K1200s Salt Shaker

BMW K1200S SALT SHAKER

SO, YOU'VE JUST introduced your highest-performance sportbike ever and you want to make a bit of a speed splash. Where ya gonna go?

Correct, the Bonneville Salt Flats. hallowed ground of all land-speeders, which is just where BMW showed up with a new K1200S at the second-annual FIM-sanctioned International Motorcycle Speed Trials by BUB.

Not exactly a full corporate effort, mind you, so a new 1200S, registered to a company exec, was sent to BMW of San Francisco, a hub for sporting riders. Bonneville vet Andy Sills, who hangs out at the dealership, agreed to ride the street machine instead of the streamliner he ran last year.

The FIM doesn’t bother with terms like stock or production. Classes are based on engine size and if the engine is supercharged or not. Then come divisions like open, partially streamlined or fully enclosed. Now, BMW knows that its 1200 isn’t the fastest sportbike in the 1300cc class.

But they also knew that you can’t win a race you don’t enter, and none of the rivals filed by the speed trial’s ’05 deadline. Oh, well.

Sills and crew installed an aftermarket muffler, took off the mirrors and swapped the stock tire for a taller Metzeler roadrace semi-slick in backthat being the only way to raise the shaftie’s overall gearing.

Come record-setting time, Sills went down at 176.758 mph and came back at 170.394 for an FIM world record, partially streamlined, 1300cc and so forth, of 173.576 mph. There you are, marketing department.

Time for one more feat? Sills had a lightbulb moment and asked event organizer Denis Manning, hey, what about a class for two-up?

Why not, Manning reflected, so Erin Hunter, who’d been running her own Honda-and is Sills’ significant other anyway-jumped on, tucked in and they turned 169.398 mph, a world record just like that.

Only at Bonneville.

Allan Girdler