[56690]

My local BMW dealer went out of business, and the closest one is now two hours away. I have to go to the dealer to finalize my entry. That sucks!

 

[56690]

BMW is only a few percent of the overall market, and their dealer base is shrinking. The insisted for a while on single line BMW only stores, and a lot of those have gone out of business. I would love to own a GS, but would be concerned about my only support being 2 hrs away.

 

[56690]

Seems to me BMW has to do something to get customers into their stores. A few years ago they started to push their dealers to go single line, and a lot of those dealers have been struggling. As I stated earlier, the dealer in my town is out of business. There was another single line dealer about an hour and a half away that closed down about two years ago. When I asked a BMW M/C employee about this, he said they have had a large number of dealers go out of business.



They make a very nice bike, and I love the GS, but truth be told, for what you get, a lot of the competition is just as nice and less expensive. I know quite a few guys who ride BMW bikes, and most of them own them because they wanted to own a BMW, not because they feel BMW stands for cutting edge technology that cannot be found elsewhere. When I looked at bikes last year, it seemed as if the prices were still relatively high, and some of the standard options were now expensive add ons. I might be wrong, but BMW needs to do a lot more to win over new riders.