Speech by Hendrik Von Kuenheim President BMW Motorrad EICMA
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Speech by Hendrik von Kuenheim President BMW Motorrad EICMA 2008 Milan, 4 November 2008 BMW Motorrad – Looking Back and Into the Future, new Models - Check against delivery - Company Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft Postal Address BMW AG 80788 München Office Address Petuelring 130 Telephone +49 89 3 82-22088 Fax +49 89 382-28567 Internet www.bmw-motorrad.com 2 Ladies and Gentlemen, I also bid you a very warm welcome to BMW Motorrad at the EICMA Show. Just a few weeks ago we launched four new BMW motorcycles: These are the three new models in the K-Series as well as the racing version of the BMW S 1000 RR, which made their debut just recently at the INTERMOT Show in Cologne. And now you can admire these motorcycles as the highlights of BMW’s presentation here at EICMA. But that is not all! Today we are happy to reveal another new production machine and a highly emotional motorcycle study. This alone demonstrates the great significance that this Show and the Italian market have for BMW Motorrad. Before taking a closer look at our two new machines, let me briefly focus on the motorcycle season so far. Once again, our large R 1200 GS and GS Adventure long-distance enduros significantly updated this spring proved to be very successful this year. Up to September we delivered almost 30,000 units of these outstanding motorcycles to customers, almost 5,000 units more than in the same period last year. This great success proves that our large long-distance enduros are more popular than ever before, even after about four years in the market. Demand for our third new model, the HP2 Sport, has also developed very positively. Indeed, with production of this machine being very limited due to the highly complex carbon-fibre body, we already have a long backlog of orders to be fulfilled. But in the meantime we have taken on a second supplier for the carbon components, which will enable us as of 2009 to build about twice as many units of the HP2 Sport a day as this year. This, we believe, will shorten the extremely long delivery times for our customers. Sales of our new midrange enduro have also developed excellently. Although this machine was only introduced in March of this year, we have already delivered more than 15,000 units of the F 800 and the F 650 GS to customers. This proves that the perfect combination of off-road qualities and allround characteristics is exactly right for many of our customers looking for a very modern and up-to-date midrange enduro. Before the end of this year, we plan to deliver more than 20,000 F-Enduros to customers. We are also receiving very positive signals from the markets on our sixth new model launched this year, the G 450 X introduced into the market on 20 September. While it is still too soon to specify any sales figures in this context, this extremely innovative sports motorcycle has already aroused very significant customer interest. Our ongoing model initiative will help BMW Motorrad generate a very positive sales result also this year. And this, as you will agree, is particularly good news considering the negative development of markets the world over. In all, our customer deliveries as of the end October 2008 amounted to some 88,100 units worldwide. So despite the in some cases quite extreme weakness of major markets, our customer deliveries year-to-date in October dropped by only about 1.7 per cent overall. 3 In Italy, our second most significant market, we even see a significant increase over the previous year, as Mr Castronovo has already stated. In France and the Great Britain we have also sold more motorcycles than in the same period last year. However, this increase in sales was not quite sufficient to set off the decrease in sales in other major markets. Looking at market shares in the plus-500 cc segment, on the other hand, we have increased our lead in all relevant markets. Indeed, thanks to our very attractive product portfolio BMW Motorrad has maintained its very strong position in comparison with the overall market. We are therefore confident that by the end of the year we will come very close to the previous year’s record sales. Our innovative power and model initiative are paying off in full particularly in these difficult times. So we will maintain our strong pressure in terms of our products, further strengthening the position of BMW Motorrad. This is also why we are continuing to strengthen our involvement in international motorsport. You already know that next season we will be entering the top series for production- based racing machines – the World Superbike Championship. Right now our two top riders Ruben Xaus and Troy Corser are testing the racing machine in Valencia. And the results of our ongoing tests already show that next year we will be entering the racing season with a very powerful and promising motorcycle. In enduro racing we have already gone a step further: Only a few weeks ago we won both the German and the European Cross Country Championships with our 450-cc Sports Enduro. In addition, we have brought home some outstanding individual results in other races such as the Erzberg Rodeo. Proceeding from the success and experience we have gained in the process, we are significantly stepping up our involvement next year. Our Enduro Team will be further reinforced by the top riders David Knight, Juha Salminen, and Marko Tarkkala. With a highly competitive motorcycle and a top team of riders we are very confident that we will really hit the headlines in the upcoming World Enduro Championship. So much for the time being, Ladies and Gentlemen, on motorsport. This year BMW Motorrad is celebrating its 85th anniversary. And our very first motorcycle back in 1923 already featured a boxer engine still used in principle in BMW’s best-selling models today. One of these models is the R 1200 RT Tourer, the motorcycle through which we established the successful Luxury Tourer concept back in 1978, that is exactly thirty years ago. Twenty-five years ago we set a broader base for our motorcycle business through the introduction of the K-Series. And exactly twenty years ago we offered ABS brakes on a motorcycle for the first time. 4 It may be a coincidence that these anniversaries all coincide this year – but it is a fact that BMW Motorrad offers pioneering achievements time and again, both in our vehicle concepts and in terms of safety and environmental compatibility. And we will continue to focus directly on this innovative power. This takes me on to our new machines presented here at the EICMA Show. It is almost a tradition for us today to present new models in the F-Series at EICMA. In 2005 these were our two new F 800 S and ST midrange motorcycles. In 2007 we launched the F 800 GS and the F 650 GS midrange endures – and today, again at the EICMA Show, we are proudly presenting the fifth model in this Series – the F 800 R! Introducing this extremely agile and compact naked bike, we are entering new terrain in the segment of dynamic midrange roadsters, which offers great growth opportunities in the years to come. About two-thirds of the dynamic midrange roadsters are sold in the large motorcycle markets Italy, Spain, and France. So with the F 800 R we will participate in this growth as of next spring. The F 800 R has all the features and ingredients required for such success. It is driven by the highest-torque engine in its segment, the parallel twin delivering maximum torque of 86 Newton-metres and maximum power of 87 hp. Together with the low weight of the machine and the excellent suspension optimised for supreme handling, our engineers have created an extremely active motorcycle easy and very pleasant to ride. With its low seat height, this machine is perfectly suited for both the very ambitious driver and the beginner. But now I have said enough – Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the new midrange roadster from BMW! Ladies and Gentlemen – the new F 800 R. The machine which rounds off the BMW F- family. We are confident that in developing the new F 800 R we have created a truly unique motorcycle in the BMW midrange segment full of character. Chris Pfeiffer, the World Street Bike Freestyle Champion, can show you what this fantastic bike can do, since he is already riding our new machine in an exciting show here at EICMA. And we are proud to present an F 800 R study in Chris Pfeiffer design as a world debut here on the BMW stand. Indeed, it is even possible that next year we might be introducing the F 800 R you see here today as a new model in the market. I could of course still say a lot about this new model. But time is short, since here you see a second motorcycle still covered up, which we are now also proud to present. You will indeed agree that we have every reason to be proud once you see this new machine, since it is a real surprise! 5 We wish to use this important Show in Milan to test the response of both the media and the public to this concept motorcycle. And while right now we have no plans to build this machine, we know that if the general response is very positive we might face a positive problem – since then we would have to carefully consider whether such a project might be economically feasible! I already stated at the beginning that BMW offers pioneering achievements time and again – also in our motorcycle concepts.