History of the BMW R51RS

In the mid 1930's, the best German privateer's ride of choice for the German 500 cc championships was the Norton. You can image the pride of the Germans was on the line, especially with BMW. The BMW Compressor dominated their class in the late 30s with multiple wins and championships throughout Europe. BMW challenged the Senior Isle of Man TT race in 1938 but Karl Gall was injured during practice and Georg Meier retired at the start line. Jock West carried the BMW banner with a 5th place finish.


In 1939 Georg "Schorsch" Meier was the first foreign competitor to win the Senior TT race on the factory prepped BMW Compressor. West came in 2nd for a BMW one, two. Karl Gall crashed during practice in 1939 and died from complications a few days before Meier's win.


BMW had a winning presence with the factory bikes, but the best German privateers had to look elsewhere. BMW had produced limited run Super Sport models with the R5SS and the R51SS in 1938. For 1939, the race division at BMW was tasked to create a competitive 500 cc machine, on par or better than the Norton, for the best private German racers.


A factory works replica was not practical as the setup and maintenance of such a machine was out of the realm of a privateer's team expertise and budget. The decision was to create a race machine based on the R51 production motorcycle. The twin cam R51 was an excellent, high performance machine and had plenty of opportunities for improvement. All of 17 examples of the R51RS were produced and only a few are known to exist today. While the race machines were available to the general public, in principle, only selected individuals were allow to purchase them.


One restored example can be found in the BMW factory museum.

Photo by stkone

Photo by pilot_micha

Photo by stkone

Photo by pilot_micha

One of the few original models came up for auction in January of 2011. It was sold to Emil Recke, a New York importer, in 1939 and was raced successfully in the US. It sold for $130,000 in 2011. 


This blog is about my adventure to recreate my own 1939 R51RS and campaign it in vintage races. I will talk about some of the history of this machine and differences between the production R51 and the RS.