Is BMW about to bring back the C1?

THE BMW C1 was one of the most eye-catching motorcycles of the early 2000s, gaining cult status in the UK and on the continent. BMW’s claims of car levels of safety didn’t win over the bike riding public, and the C1 was only sold for two years garnering around 12,000 global sales.

With such a sketchy track record with roofed motorcycles, you’d think that Beemer wouldn’t be very keen to dip a two in this niche area of motorcycling again, although that could be wrong. The firm filed in 2018 for this machine, although the patents have only just been published.

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What you can see is a new type of modular scooter, that can either be ridden as a funky roofed machine or like a conventional scooter be simply removing some bolts from the structure. The backbone of the bike is the BMW C evolution electric scooter, first produced in 2014, with a carbon fibre and aluminium superstructure covering the rider.

As with the original C1 from the early 2000s, safety will be one of the prime selling points BMW will be looking to exploit to get sales, and they are going all out with the safety features of the machine you can see here. From reading the details that accompany this machine and a host of other patents relating to it from recent months, the bike could include crumple zones, four-point harnesses, and even airbags to keep riders in one piece.

I suppose the only strange thing about the machine, aside from the obvious, is that the original C1 was claimed to give car-like levels of safety to those riding. No doubt in an effort to get car drivers out of their cages and onto two-wheels. If Beemer wanted to repeat that, surely they should have given the bike another front wheel and made it rideable on a car licence.

Or maybe that’s just too much weird in just one motorcycle!