NRV Rides
The Aesthetic Charms of a Slash 5 [/5]
BMW Motorcycle
Text by Karl H. Kazaks Photos by Tom Wallace Kerry Underwood and Kenny Vandeveer stood in the detached garage outside of Vandeveer’s Floyd home surrounded by a number of motorcycles, most of them vintage. The object of their attention was Underwood’s 1971 BMW R50/5, for which Vandeveer had just rebuilt the engine, an air-cooled, fourstroke, opposed twin boxer. “I bought it from my roommate, a BMW enthusiast, 25 years ago,” Underwood relates. “It languished for many years until I persuaded Kenny to work on it.” 26
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“It’s the first old BMW I ever messed with,” states Vandeveer, who has restored old Japanese bikes and uses as his regular ride a modern-day BMW motorcycle. The cylinders on the 1971 had frozen up, and it took Vandeveer several weeks of soaking and tapping to get them free. To complete the rejuvenation project, they had to get a parts bike out of Florida. This bike has the formfollows-function aesthetic common on motorcycles of the early 1970s. It also has the solidly-engineered air of BMWs of just about any era. But the bike, a reliable
tourer with 498 cc, was almost never built. In the mid-1960s, BMW was seriously considering scrapping its motorcycle program. Sales were down, while sales for their automobiles were picking up, taking up more space in their motor works. Ultimately they decided to press ahead with motorcycles. They hired an engineer from Porsche and tasked him with completely redesigning their lineup of motorbikes. The result was the “Slash 5” series of motorcycles made in the 1970-1973 model years. They also moved motorcycle production out of Bavaria and
S eptemb er/Octob er 2020
