Story of this Motorcycle
More Pictures of the '72 BMW
The History of My '72 BMW R75/5 Toaster
My dad and I found this bike in an ad in a Peoria, IL newspaper in 1994. We bought it and fixed it up. A year later, I talked my dad into buying a black '75 R75/6 and giving me the '72. It worked! We rode these from Chicago all the way down to New Orleans and back. We stopped in Memphis (Beale street and Graceland!), Vicksburg and other places on the way down, and took the Natchez Trace Parkway on the way back north.
The BMW R75/5
The BMW R75/5 was only produced in 1971-73. Only some of them had the chrome panels on the tank, deemed the "toaster tank" because they look like the old pop-up toasters. There was also an oversized tank, and one with small rubber pads instead of chrome. Some BMW owners complained about the chrome at the time, saying it made the bikes look like cheap Japanese bikes, which were using chrome on their tanks in the late 1960s. After '73, BMW dropped the chrome because of the compaints. Personally, I think the toaster tank looks great!