BMW K1600 Technical Funny Front Fork

BMW's choice of a so-called 'funny front fork' for all its K-series bikes up to and including the 2022 K1600 family of models was a typically brave and free-thinking decision from the German company, often given insufficient credit for being not only Europe's largest manufacturer of premium motorcycles, but also the most technically advanced, and versatile.

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BMW originally gave credit for the wishbone front suspension on its K-models to Zimbabwean engineer Norman Hossack, then British-based but now living in California, who raced a Yamaha TZ350 in the UK while working as a race mechanic at the McLaren Formula 1 team. That's where in 1979 he first had the idea of adapting a racing car's wishbone front suspension to motorcycle use, by effectively rotating it through 90 degrees. Though Hossack succeeded in patenting the design in 1984 (but later allowed this to expire, allowing BMW to adopt it without having to pay him any royalties!), in fact this ought never to have been granted to him. For, just as with Honda's Pro-Arm adoption of ELF's single-sided rear swingarm, which Moto Guzzi had in fact manufactured in volume on the Galletto model 20 years before the French company succeeded in patenting a similar format, French engineer Claude Fior had independently developed an identical wishbone front suspension design to Hossack's 18 months earlier. Indeed, even before Hossack ever built his first bike with a wishbone fork, Fior had actually finished 8th in the 1979 Le Mans 24 Hours riding the Fior-Yamaha XS1100 with what was to become his trademark front end bolted to the stock Japanese chassis, thus transforming the handling. Fior contested several major Enduran