THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT...

BMW's not reinventing the wheel with its ever more popular mid-weight naked F 900 R... but it has changed them, plus a few other bits, for this latest iteration.

- BIG MAC

It's a sign of the times when you go to a BMW launch at which it is presenting no less than FIVE new or updated models, and only one of them is a sportsbike. In fact, reflecting on the 2024/25 launch season, of the 10 bikes I've ridden, nine have been nakeds. We can no longer say things like the market is changing and there's a shift towards naked bikes - it HAS changed. We are well and truly no longer at the dawn of a new age; we're living in it right now. All the manufacturers know this, which is why the naked sector has seen the most amount of activity in one launch season that I can recall in my 22 years of writing about bikes. It's not just me, though. Look at Bruce's list of bikes he's been to review for the mag in the past few issues. With the exception of the Yamaha R9 and the two Ducati Panigales, his to-do list has been all naked bikes, too.

This new order is giving the public what they want, and it's also providing us with a fantastically diverse spectrum of bikes to try out and digest. Where sportsbikes more or less all arrived at the same super-intense, highly focused point of development, mainly due to the purpose of that bike's existence, the naked sector is free of any set purpose, which allows manufacturers and their designers a level of freedom to go where they want with their bikes concept and delivery. And BMW is no different...