I’ll admit it was the sidecar that really caught my eye, particularly the gorgeous red upholstery. There’s something very Dita von Teese about it. But, unquestionably, the motorcycle ─ completely rebuilt by the previous owner, according to the seller ─ is a thing of beauty, too. Collectively, this is one of the prettiest rigs I’ve found since I started writing for Bike-urious. I mean, wow.
The BMW R50/2 was produced from 1960-1969. It was driven by a four-speed, air-cooled 494cc boxer twin that delivered 26 horsepower. The bike was “widely recognized for its smooth power delivery to the rear wheel via clean shaft drive,” according to Motorcycle Classics, and still continues to win kudos from classic bike enthusiasts.
Only slightly related: the R50/2 looks so much like the bike that John Sullivan rode alongside Robert Pirsig in their Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance road trip that I spent a stupid amount of time searching the interwebs to see if that was indeed the bike he used. It wasn’t. But it was a /2 of the same era; John’s bike was an R60/2.
The sidecar meanwhile, would have been manufactured at some point before the motorcycle. The Steib Metallbau company, founded by Josef Steib, had been a world leader in sidecar construction before the Second World War. But in 1965 demand had decreased enough that the company abandoned sidecars and decided to focus solely on agricultural machinery. I’d be interested to know if their tractors were this pretty.
I am by no an expert on sidecars, but from the pictures, this appears to be a Type S501, one Steib’s most popular models.
You can find this R50/2 with sidecar for sale for $35,000 in Dayton, Ohio, here on Facebook Marketplace.