Curse of the clutch!

As things progress on the Teutonic Boxer twin, Ralph asks: “Is this revenge for Brexit?”

- RALPH FERRAND

There are a good number of people who think that the BMW Boxer powered bike is at the pinnacle of the motorcycle tree. I have to be honest and say that I am not one of these devotees, but as the years have gone by I have developed a respect for the Boxer.

I have no time for the latest crop of bikes coming from Munich, because they are absolutely rammed full of computerised wizardry and CAN bus (Controller Area Network), which in my humble opinion is the work of Satan himself (Robert Bosch Gmbh). It supposedly makes diagnostics simpler and uses thinner wires. In my experience it prevents normal engineers from working on these bikes as they need to be plugged into special computers loaded with bespoke and astronomically expensive software. Would manufacturers create systems that only their franchise dealers could deal with? Surely not?