A skunkworks project that inadvertently established a new genre of motorcycling.

Like so many great discoveries — penicillin, Velcro and, yes, Viagra — BMW’s GS was an accident. Okay, not quite an accident: the act of shoving a 797.5-cc Boxer twin into a motocross chassis hardly a random bit of engineering. But, at the very least, its instigation was, even way back in 1978, a sideshow, and its eventual success — leading to what has become motorcycling’s fastest growing segment — was not remotely forecast. It was, in every sense of the word, a “skunkworks” project, the work of one or two men looking to conquer a racing series that almost no one today remembers. 

THE ORIGIN OF GENRE

The common refrain is that the “Gelände/Straße” was created to take BMW into the then hugely popular Paris-Dakar race. And indeed, at its launch in 1980, the G/S — the slash only lasted until the end of 1986, being dropped for the second-gen R100 GS — did enter the then-Africa-centric rally. And yes, they were dominant almost right out of the gate, winning in 1981, ’83, ’84 and ’85 in the hands of Hubert Auriol and Gaston Rahier, both becoming legends in Paris-Dakar lore mainly for winning on what seemed then — and, truth be told, even now — a rather ungainly off-roader.

But that’s not the real why of BMW’s G/S. In fact, according to BMW Motorrad itself, the truth is far more pedestrian. In 1977, Germany announced an off-road sport class for over 750-cc motorcycles and the company decided to use this as an opportunity to get back into off-road sport. They tasked one guy — yes, one person — with the job of creating a suitable dirt-biking Boxer and gave him three months to shoehorn the boxer twin into a dirt bike that weighed less than 142 kilos (just 313 pounds!). 

That one man, Laszlo Peres, was also the chief road tester as well as the first man to enter the famed G/S into competition. So while the Paris-Dakar may have created the legend of the G/S, it was not why the Gelände/Straße (off-road/street) was created.

Nonetheless, from such humble beginning has the GS gradually turned into BMW’s most popular model. Not only that, one can trace the origins of the entire adventure touring segment back to the original R80. 

Pretty much every adventure bike since then — from KTM to Honda and Triumph to Royal Enfield — owes its being to that, again, skunkworks grafting of touring twin to motocross frame. And, oh, there’s also an entire industry — from luxury travel providers to adventure-oriented accessory products — based on, again, those BMW boys skunking about…