German Engineering

[schnowz]

You too can pay twice as much for a bike to get half the reliability of a 
Kawi.

Quote from
http://www.ironbuttrally.com/IBR/2007.cfm?DocID=45

"The Tarnished Blue and White Roundel

A disproportionate number of the DNFs ("Did Not Finish")fall on the 
shoulders of BMW. BMW failed several riders, demonstrating that they are no 
longer capable of building motorcycles that can run 11,000 miles in 11 days 
without a significant fraction experiencing a catastrophic drivetrain 
failure of some sort. BMW of North America has requested contact information 
for the riders who experienced failures. The riders BMW should be more 
concerned about are the thousands of unsuspecting souls who will breakdown 
in the future because the company has lost its previous ability to either 
design durable drivetrain components or (more likely) adequately monitor 
production and assembly quality. It's way, way past time for BMW to fix its 
drivetrain reliability problems. A good start might be to acknowledge that 
there is a problem."