2025 BMW M 1000 R COMPETITION REVIEW – BEHOLD SUPREMACY

IMAGES BY NICK ‘IT’S RAINING AGAIN’ EDARDS

It’s always challenging to produce a review of a bike so few people will ever ride or own. They deem such a bike “too much” (though too much of what precisely is unknown), or they say it’s “too expensive”, which is just another way of saying they don’t want it bad enough.

 

I don’t write reviews for people like that. I write reviews for people like me. And people like me are irredeemable motorcycle zombies. Dissolute freaks forever doomed to chase the grey ribbon as hard as we dare, for as long as we can.

BMW’s insane M 1000 R Competition is made precisely for people like that. No-one else even need apply.

 

I ride lots of bikes. And I have ridden all sorts of exotica over the years. And I can count on the fingers of my two hands which of those bikes has left a deep and forever love-scar on my psyche. There haven’t been all that many. The M 1000 R Competition is just the most recent.

Yes, it’s simply that special. There is nothing it needs do better. It is not lacking in anything. There is nothing about it I didn’t love. It is one of those uber-rare motorcycles that ticks every crazy, demon-filled box you’ve got hidden in your fool head. And each and every time you ride it – gently and sensibly or with churning red-eyed madness – you come away from it convinced it’s the greatest motorcycle ever made.

It is simultaneously a perfectly enjoyable everyday commuter-type thing, content to purr through traffic, seamlessly snicking through the gears, lane-splitting with aplomb, and sitting at the lights while the entire world stares at it like it’s some alien hell-bot. And people do stare at it. Even the ones in cars who aren’t really sure what it is they’re looking at, but know from the styling cues and carbon-fibre everything, that the M 1000 R Competition is not “just another motorcycle”.

 

Motorcyclists, who do know what they’re looking at (and that is so not you strange Royal Enfield owners), look at it with blazing desperation in their eyes. The M 1000 R Competition makes an unforgettable visual statement. And the longer you look, the more special it gets.

But what it does, and how it does it…well, hell, pilgrim. That shit is on some other level altogether. I’ll show you the numbers. And you’ll nod your head like you understand what they mean. But you won’t. Not really. You have to ride it to understand.

 

And you will ride it in what I feel is the perfect riding position for every kind of riding. You are canted forward, so you look and feel like you mean business, but you’re not cramped or in a racer’s crouch. So you can spend all day in the seat with a sleeping bag ocky-strapped to the cowl, utterly thrilled at just how fast the horizon throws itself at you.

BMW has voodooed 210 horses at 13,750rpm into it. It makes 113Nm at 11,100rpm. It weighs 194kg wet. You go ahead and roll them around in your head for a bit. I’ll wait.

 

And you’re back. Let me tell you how it gets even better. The unsprung weight reduction thanks to the carbon-fibre wheels is very noticeable. The thing changes direction and turns seemingly with the ease and lightness of thought. I had to quickly teach myself NOT to lever it into corners like a bike with normal cast or spoked wheels. I learned quickly.

And please stop being hysterical about carbon-fibre wheels. I smashed an M 1000 XR Competition for several thousand kilometres up and down the Victorian high country last year, and for the first two days my brain screamed at me about the carbon-fibre wheels failing, because I am old enough to remember when that was a thing. I hit a lot of potholes at speed anyway. I hammered it though corrugations, big and small. And I arrived home blown away by how good the wheels now are. The M 1000 R Competition has the same wheels – and I was no longer hysterical about them.

So I ran it hard along some unhinged backroads out where I live. It is mind-bending in its performance. I struggle to process information at speeds over 220. I’m clinically insane at anything over 250. And I’m still several thousand rpm away from red-line.

The Highway Patrol has allegedly been reviewing footage of one such event. It’s been five weeks. I’m breathing a bit easier. But one of my mates, who was in front of me, is walking for three months. In hindsight, I should have not bothered hiding behind a truck down a sideroad for twenty minutes and just kept going. I would have been most of the way home before back-up arrived. Still, had the granny-frier been a few kilometres further along, there would have been no need for video footage. We just would have been shot.

Let me just pause here to venerate the astonishing array of electronic wizardry the M is packed with. And let’s be honest. Without the myriad rider aids, which are so insanely polished you don’t even notice them keeping you out of the traction ward, the M would be unrideable by mortals. With them, the M becomes transcendental in its performance. It will of course let you make custom maps. You can wheelie it a bit, or a lot. You can smoke up the rear coming out of a corner a bit or a lot. Or you can just leave it in Dynamic Pro Mode and see if you can upset it. Bet you can’t.

I encourage you to go to this link  and see just what level of computer-powered sorcery has been applied to the bike. I do not need to fill up column-inches re-writing the spec sheet for you. I have so not run out of things to say about the bike.

Let’s assume we live in an alternate universe. In that universe, you can find deserted roads where you can see what lives at the pointy end of the speedo, and so you do. What happens as you hold fifth to 200, then seamlessly select top gear? What comes next? What comes next is just insane bullshit. The M keeps right on accelerating, just as hard as it was accelerating when you were redlining it like a mindless animal in the lower gears. And just to clarify: I did not redline it in fourth or fifth or sixth. There was no point. Like, what would I learn? It’s a missile. Of course it is. And you don’t need to redline it to know that. Trust me, you’re not missing out in any way. The acceleration will melt your brain without you ever hearing the rev-limiter.

And in spite of all this unhinged military-grade bang, the M is so superbly balanced, poised, and tractable, and thus rideable, it will astonish you time and time again. Every time you get on it, it will delight you. What more could anyone possibly want from a motorcycle?

Now about the aero. I understand the carbon-fibre wings the M 1000 R Competition sports at the front are triggering for some people. Not sure why. Because unlike some bikes, these are not there for show. At 220km/h they add an extra ten-and-a-bit kilo of downforce, which is meant to help keep the front-tyre in contact with the road. I’m of the view this is not a bad thing at all.

Bikes like this utterly change one’s terms of reference. That is what makes them special. That is what makes them so desirable. Bikes like this are the supreme expression of engineering excellence. And they are almost peerless. The M 1000 R Competition certainly is, because unlike it’s very very few competitors, it makes no demands on you. You do not need to compromise to ride it fast and hard. It doesn’t fry your thighs. It doesn’t hunt at low rpm. It doesn’t feel flighty or nervous at stupid speeds. It commutes with the great good manners of a much smaller bike. And it does not insist you bring skills you don’t have to the party. Instead, it let’s you ride it as fast as you want, and as hard as you can, and it will always offer you more of everything if you want.

 

It is truly supremacy incarnate.