In a past life I must have kicked puppies and stolen from children. Or kicked children and stolen from puppies. Clearly something bad is in my past.

Now I don’t normally believe in reincarnation but an experience today has caused me to question that stand on the concept of karma. You see, the local motorcycle shop where I have my BMW serviced is Foothills BMW. They are a good shop and, among other nice services, they offer loaner bikes so you can ride even while your bike is otherwise laid up. In my case, I brought my GS in for its 36,000 mile service today and got one of their loaner bikes to get me to/from work. Normally, their service pool is made up of F650GS and CS bikes but it appears they have recently added new bike…I was expecting a F650 but what I got was a R1200C Montauk. Oh the horror!

Anyone that has ready my blog for awhile will know that there is only one bike I have ever publicly criticized on the blog. It was a posting I did back in December of last year where I explain how glad I was that BMW was finally stopping production of the R1200C.

I said then that the R1200C is “the high water mark in BMW’s pool of aesthetic embarrassments”. I can safely say that my opinion of the bike now that I have viewed it from the seat hasn’t changed at all. Mechanically, there isn’t much to complain about with the Montauk. The engine is better than I expected, still gutless at the lowest end of the tach but having surprisingly good acceleration in the mid-range. Comfort wise, the thick handlebars just suck (why mimic one of the worst parts of Harley Davidson bikes when you build a cruiser?) and the bend on the bars was odd enough to hurt my wrists. As with all cruisers, the foot pegs are too far forward for my preference meaning I kept slamming my feet down into the pavement when I went to put my feet on the pegs only to find they weren’t where I expected them.

Ultimately, my complaint with the bike is still its looks. Too many things going in too many different directions all covered with too much chrome. It looks more like a mutant Hot Wheels toy than a real motorcycle. I’ll just have to hope no one recognizes me on the 15 mile ride back to the shop. In the meantime, I’m gonna be real nice to puppies and small children so this won’t happen to me again in my next lifetime.

[image from my photo collection.]