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My first BMW R27 motorcycle was ordered through the importer, Butler & Smith of New York City, for delivery at the factory in Munich in May of 1966. The invoice showed the total cost was $680 not including tax. I arrived at the factory in a taxi on a drizzly day and walked across a gravel lot to a low brick building with an overhead door. Inside, my bike was sitting in a row of other US-spec bikes waiting for their owners to ride them away. A manager in a smock gave me some instructions and a free tank of gas from the pump in the lot. I rode out onto the slick cobblestones and trolley tracks of Munich on the first motorcycle I had ever ridden. My first stop was a cycle shop to buy a helmet and some rain pants.Upon emerging from the shop, I could not get the bike started, and a crowd of people gathered. Several of the men took turns at the kickstarter, seeing from the tourist plate that the bike had just come out of their factory, saying over and over that it "must" start. It was merely flooded, and I leaned not to do that again.
I started out with a suitcase and a little duffel bag. The suitcase fitted perfectly on the rack, with a yellow poncho for visibility and protection from rain. After the first day I discarded the duffel bag and its contents as being too much and too hard to keep on the bike. My daily riding outfit was a corduroy jacket with a Kodak Retina IIIC camera tucked into the breast pocket, and blue rain parka for wind protection. When it rained, I put on the heavy rain pants and rubber boots that I had bought in Munich.
On the second day I reached Zurich where I checked the bike into the Radex BMW dealership for a 300 mile service, and checked myself into the cantonspital to get some medicine for a cold that was developing. The medical care was free, and the cold was gone the next day when I reached Geneva for a couple of days of sightseeing.
I had bought a youth hostel pass, and often my single greatest daily expense was the gas for the bike. I had no itinerary except for a general plan to travel on back roads and see the countryside. From Geneva I rode south to the French Mediterranean coast and crossed west through Sete to the medieval city of Carcassone near the Atlantic coast, before turning south through the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. There was little traffic, and the cold and fog of the mountains made me feel very vulnerable and dependent on the sturdy R27 under me. After descending into the Catalonia part of Spain, I found a dry, warm and very old countryside, with ruined forts on every hill.
I went to Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast for a few days of sightseeing and had the 1200 mile service done at a BMW car garage. While I could understand some French, I understood no Spanish, and was not sure if the service was performed correctly. The language problem and some thefts in the hostel changed my mind about touring Spain, so I left Barcelona to go back to France. On the way, the bike's plastic turnsignal indicator switch broke and fell off, so I decided to return to Geneva which had a good dealer.
From Geneva I spent over a week touring the Rhone valley of France, visiting many chateaux and other architectural sites, making my way across the country to Brittany and Normandy on the Atlantic coast. I saw the medieval island city of Mont St Michel, rode along the beaches of the Allied landings and visited the famous sub "pens" at Lorient, France where German U-boats had been based. The bomb-proof construction was amazing, and I pondered on all the activity that had ended here only 22 years before.
My shipping date from Hamburg was approaching, so I continued north to spend a day in Amsterdam. I came out of the Rijksmuseum there to find a business card under the seat strap. It was from Michael Bondy, Vice President of Butler & Smith, the New York BMW distributors, with a note saying "good luck on your trip".
Then it was directly to Hamburg for the rendezvous with the crater and shipper that BMW had arranged for me. The R27 had performed perfectly for 4,000 miles. Although a very small bike by today's standards, the 250cc was a substantial motorcycle on the roads of Europe in the mid-1960s. Most of the bikes were mopeds, scooters and little two-stroke motorcycles.
When I went to pick it up the bike from the warehouse on the Brooklyn docks, the customs officer could not inspect the bike until I uncrated it, but I had no tools. Even if I could uncrate the bike, the dockmaster would not allow me to leave the crating materials in the warehouse. After scratching my head for awhile, I realized that I was expected to hire one of the longshoremen to uncrate the bike and dispose of the wood. As soon as the money changed hands, prybars and hammers appeared and the bike was liberated.
I discovered the toolkit had disappeared in transit, so the next day I rode to Butler & Smith's office on the upper west side of Manhattan to get another toolkit. B&S was housed in a narrow brownstone building with wood floors. In the front of the ground floor was an office of clacking typewriters, with an open wooden freight elevator to the floors above which contained some new bikes and a vast stock of parts. It was BMW heaven. With a new toolkit stowed away, I rode up to Maine to visit a friend.
From Maine I rode home to Lousville, making 500 miles the last day. This photo was taken soon after my arrival, showing the corduroy jacket I had worn all summer. All too soon that magical summer full of motorcycling was over, and I rode the bike to Philadelphia to resume my last year of graduate school. The R27 went a total of 8,000 miles that summer with no problem other than the broken turn signal switch the first week in Europe.
The bike spent a year in Philadephia, being ridden daily, with trips to New York and Baltimore. There was an attempted spring vacation trip to Louisville that ended with snow in the middle of Pennsylvania - the bike returned to Philadelphia the next day with brown icicles slanting rearward from the fenders. After that experience with hypothermia, I added a Wixom handlebar fairing. Upon my graduation in 1967 the bike returned to Louisville and took me back and forth to work at an architectural firm. It was a time when the Interstate system was being built, and this photo was taken on the deserted gravel roadbed under the interchange between I-71 and I-264 outside Louisville.
The R27 had only one problem during this time. The spark plug insert began to gradually stick further and further out from the head. There was no dealer in Louisville, so I called Butler & Smith. Although the bike had about 15,000 miles, they shipped me a new cylinder head, and thus I began my mechanical acquaintance with these bikes.
Meanwhile there was a war on and I no longer had a student deferment, so I had applied and gotten into the Navy's officer candidate school. When it was time for me to report to school in early 1968, I carefully built a pallet to serve as the base for a crate, removed the battery and waxed the bike all over, and stored it away.
While I was in the service, the glamorous /5 bikes were introduced and my heart turned against the little R27 that had served so well. One day in 1970, I came home on leave and found that there was a new dealer in town. I uncrated the R27 and traded it to the dealer toward a new $1500 silver R50/5. The R27 had 18,000 miles and the trade-in allowance was $600, almost the same price I paid for it when new.
Today, with the roads full of high-powered motorcycles that scream or bellow, a 250 cc bike is considered insignificant. Yet the R27 has the smoothest engine and suspension of any bike that I have ridden, took me 500 miles one day, and went 18,000 miles in two years on two continents in all seasons of the year through rain and snow, without a breakdown. Even today, I find a ride on my present R27 to be as much fun as any larger BMW.
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