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Can anyone Downunder provide some background on this model? The Phil Hawksley site shows 9738 bikes produced for the R100RT but when one adds up the VIN numbers, only about 8255 bikes are accounted for. On Phil Hawskely's site, he says that the 9738 bikes includes the R100LT but he further goes on to state the following:

"BMW R100LT. Such a model appears nowhere within BMW's own reference material however it has become clear that such a model designation was used within Australia and some reference has been found in French brochures. The designation appears to have been used at some point between 1993 and 1995 for what would appear to be the model that was designated R100RT Classic elsewhere in the world i.e. a mono-shock R100RT with many extras included as standard. I have no idea of the number of machine produced with this designation but I do have two chassis numbers from Australia 6339681 & 6338864 - the BMW ETK lists both of these numbers as R100RT. Exactly what extras were included is debatable although one guy claims it was fitted with a Corbin seat (I'd suspect this was more likely to have been the standard 'Comfort seat' which is a similar shape)."

From the Hawksley site, a lot of the models for the Mono R100RT have VINs like 6xxxxxx, the usual 7 digits. But his website lists VINs of 0470001 thru 0470400. I wonder if there are VINs that are either higher or lower than those numbers. I did some playing around with the http://www.bmw-z1.com/VIN/VINdecode-e.cgi website and found that I could enter up to 0471658 and it still returned R100RT built in 12/1995. I played on the lower end but found I could to as low as 0453999 and still get R100RT built in 11/1994. Now that's too many bikes!!!

Anybody have some solid information which can account for the missing 1483 bikes? Does anyone have the beginning and ending VIN number for these R100LTs?

Kurt in S.A.

From my research into my LT I found that it has a compliance plate thats says its an RT. I understand that BMW Australia wanted to celebrate the end of the airhead RTs. So they, BMW Australia, put heated grips, a comfort seat and "LT" badges on the fairing. I have seen these badges in different positions on the fairing on different LTs. Mine had BMW Roundels on the fairing sides. I have seen LTs without them.

Hope this helps.

Its really just an RT.

Ross -

In my googling, I came across your blog and got more information. As you said, they're RTs with some special features to make the LTs. I guess my thrust was to understand the VIN numbers and try and find the missing numbers. Hawksley lists the VINs for all mono R100RTs. In his example above, the VINs that he lists are embedded in the published range of VINs so that doesn't explain things. BMW must have just taken a number of bikes within the middle of production and designated them as LTs or possible that was done in Australia. I'm wondering, though, if there was additional production that is not accounted for.

On a separate thread on the MOA forum, somone asked about their R100RTC with VIN 6294665 which is 368 numbers past the last US bike shown on Hawksley's site. You can plug the VIN 6294685 into the "bmw z-1" decoder and still get an R100RT built in 12/1995...that's 388 bikes past the last published VIN. The next number 6294686 doesn't compute.

Maybe this additional production is on the European side. From Hawksley's site, the last bikes listed for Europe (or non-US) were given VINs of 0470001 to 0470400...this was during the period 11/1994 to 2/1995. A little unusual to have a leading 0 for a VIN. I wonder if there were more produced with these type of VINs.

Kurt in s.A.