My first model I got myself. After 18 years I'm back to lego and I could not choose better set to add to my collection. The motorbike looks even more pretty in real life, but I was surprised how big it was.

Building experience

I'm used to very old sets, and new instructions are super easy to follow. Took my around 3 hours to finish building the set. Would like if instead of stickers, parts were printed, but I was able to apply them nicely. (Not a fan of them, my old sets have the stickers mostly ruined after years of play)

One thing for sure, when I will have a bit free time and decide to build a B model, I would need to check the instructions to pull the motorbike apart. There are many places that can be hard to disassemble.

Parts

I'm not a big lego builder. But I get some weird kind of joy from parts I never seen before in lego set.

But we get a lot of similar parts, that for sure.

But most important we get the special piece for 40 years of lego technic : D

Playability

Me, a 28yo women had a joy driving it around. a cousin son (few yo) was mesmerized and loved to drive it a bit on the table. even my dad could not stop himself.
Don't know what I like more, the moving parts around the engine or springs on both wheels.

Also if you take joy from building alone, you have two models that can be build in price of one, and I'm one of these people for sure.

Should You buy it?

Yes if you like motors. Yes if you like Technic.

So, I could spare the time to build the set that I was looking for. First of all the real bike is fantastic. It always catches my eye when I am on the road even though I am not much of a bike-lover. It is very nice that TLG decided to convert it to a Lego Set.

This set entered my "to buy list" from the day it was announced. This would be the first set from 2017 for me. I wanted to have a 40th Anniversary Brick. It includes nice elements for me like:

• 6 Beam Frame 5x7,
• 1 Beam R. Frame 5x11,
• 2 Propeller Shaft,
• 2 Huuuge 100,6 Motorcycle Tyre,
• 2 Shock Absorber Extra Hard and last but not the least the 40th Anniversary Brick.

The Set contains 603 pieces, 123 of them being black connector pegs - which I will come to a few lines later.

The moment you open the box you find the Huge 100,6 Motorcycle Tyres and their rims. The plastic bags are unnumbered, there is a small sticker sheet and 2 separate instructions books for A and B models which are 100 pages each.

The build was very fun. It took me a 2 hours interval to build it completely. Again for those who wonder if there was any, the only repetitive step was at the end of the building process where you build the side suitcases. Generally it was very enjoyable 2 hours. You get a few extra of the smallest pieces like transparent studs or pegs in case you lose some of them as usual.

You complete the whole motorcycle in exactly 200 steps. What concerned me was the amount of black connector pegs in this set. There were 123 of them and they almost stayed at the same number even though I was almost at the half of the book and the bike was half way complete. I started to think about something. Then the reality struck me 20 minutes later when I completed the bike EXCEPT the side and the top suitcase. Almost all of the elements were gone, there were only gray beams and black pegs left. I kept on building and at the end I wanted to count the pieces that I used just for the suitcases. The bike looks naked without the bags, that's for sure. In my opinion the bags give the spirit of the BMW R1200 GS. However it was saddening for me that you use exactly -if I didn't count wrong- 60 black connector pegs plus 74 additional pieces including gray beams mostly and other stuff, which makes 134 pieces total. It makes around 20% of the whole piece count! I felt like spending more money on what I could get for cheaper. However I always kept an eye out for beam frames, so I convinced myself that I spent the money for the Beam Frames at least just to calm down :)

After all I got the set that I wanted for some time and added very nice new elements to my collection. The size of the motorcycle is very good. It is almost as big as the model shown on the box. The dimensions are approximately 33 cm long, 18 cm high and 10 cm wide. Unfortunately the 40th Anniversary Brick stays out of the sight naturally. It sits right at the bottom of the model and you can see it when you top it over.

• The pistons of the 2 cylinder boxer engine move when you roll the rear wheel. It is nice to see a shaft driven bike (forgive me about the technical terms about bikes :) )
• Hand steered front wheel
• Front and back suspension
• Opening top and side suitcases
• Folding kickstand

I really liked building the set and I'm happy that I bought it so I highly recommend it.

You can see the finished model in front of the box from the link below:

https://hizliresim.com/o6VkD9

Well I actually built this set a while back, so I have way more sets by now but thanks to some time constraints my review is late. I still try to stay to my original points that I made then. I really liked the Ducati so I found that Lego had made another Licenced motorcycle a little while back, and it was not so expensive on the secondary market, so it was a easy decision.

Building/Parts: 5/4

The building process is quite simple nothing too hard. Only thing is if I compare it to Ducati then Ducati is way better model having V4 engine 2 speed gearbox + Neutral in same size body. This BMW only has Flat2 engine which is accurate to real motorcycle. Suspension is way better for Ducati as thanks to new parts for front suspension.

I also give its props for having B-build that is not common any more sadly. I prefer the A model because B model is a weird futuristic flying motorcycle, so I don't relate to it so much but Cool building process, and you get more fun out of this set.

Aesthetics 5

I think its very fell transformed into lego technic product no complaints here.

Playability 5

It is very playable I see no weakness in this for this model.

Value for money: 4

Great build and aesthetics, but you should go for Ducati at this point if you don't want to specifically add this to you collection

Overall: 4

Another great set. If I built this set before Ducati it would probably would be 5-star set for me, but It's great to see that Lego has upped their game a lot since this set. I would recommend this set for collectors only at this point. If you want cool and cheap Motorcycle build that is easy to get at any toy or lego store get the Ducati. I have not yet acquired the huge BMW motorcycle, so I can't give any comparison in that department.

I think my first ever technic set as a kid was the 8838 bike. Perhaps fitting then that in 2018 another technic motorbike lured me back into Lego for the first time in many years. At around €50 it was a reasonable expense, it looked decently sized and with some interesting authentic functionality. It turned out to be a perfect re-entry point to the hobby.

I'm not a fan of bikes in particular, but definitely of vehicles and mechanical things in general. What caught my eye with this set especially was the replication of BMW's "telelever" front suspension and the single-sided rear swing arm with shaft drive rather than chain.

The build felt slower than I would have liked personally. The instructions are easy to follow, but you almost spend more time flipping pages than actually building. But then I am well familiar with the principles of technic construction in general, I imagine a first-time technic builder could struggle more with pieces that sometimes look almost alike for example. With a little patience though, anyone should be able to get this right.

When finished, I had a decent looking model of a bike in front of me. But comparing it to pictures of the real thing it only roughly resembles the overall proportions. I think it should stand more upright in its posture, be more muscular, and unfortunately it's missing many distinct visual features. It looks very thin especially around the seat cushion area. The luggage boxes are a nice touch though, I have tried removing them but that only revealed just how much character they add.

There are a few stickers in this set, but they are mainly for some BMW branding so if you choose to leave them out it doesn't take away much from the look.

The functions work mostly as expected, but then playing around with it a little I started noticing things that could have been better. If I'm being picky it turns out to be quite a list of little annoyances, some more severe than others.

• The tyres feel a bit cheap in their material, seem to be more of a softer plastic than actual rubber. They look fine, but don't grip well on any hard surfaces.
• The unique "telelever" front suspension is not a double wishbone setup, contrary to what I have noticed people thinking. It uses two wishbone pieces, but only the lower of those articulates. This allows for separating the spring (and damper on the real bike) from the telescopic forks themselves. Although the principle of this is captured correctly by the designer of this set, the geometry of it is wrong. When the suspension compresses the wheel moves more towards the rear than up, which would be horrible on a real bike. I think with some modification this could be fixed, if the articulated wishbone piece could be mounted more horizontally, as its real counterpart is.
• The front fork telescopic movement easily catches on its own friction if the load gets out of alignment. This is a bit ironic since one of the benefits of the telelever design is to avoid precisely that.
• The rear suspension is very soft under the weight of the luggage boxes, and it has quite limited travel. Only about half of the travel of the actual spring is being utilised, so maybe it's fixable with some modification too.
• The luggage boxes are made purely of technic elements, only for the sake of being made of technic elements it seems. Better looking boxes could have been made in the same scale using system pieces instead. But this does at least make the set a better technic parts pack, and more homogenous in its looks.
• All the vertical load of the boxes at the back is structurally hanging off a single angle element, that makes it feel a bit fragile. The assembly is definitely flexing worryingly but nothing has actually broken for me yet, so I guess it's fine.
• The exhaust pipe is too small and inaccurately moves with the rear suspension.

Overall though, this set was enough to win me over. I'm into Lego again. Importantly I feel that I got my moneys worth of stuff with this model, and even with its flaws it's a fine piece of kit. As a bonus, it included a 40th anniversary technic beam, and there is a B-model for some added enjoyment. But I will probably see if I can make some adjustments to the main model before giving that a go. This is fun, almost like it's meant to be taken apart and put together again differently. Wait...