has covered 25000 miles and has plenty of corrosion, more than a 35000 miles yamaha I owned, I also ride with a zx12r, a 22000 miles rizla suzuki that has completed the nordcap and a 18000 mile bandit, now I clean my bike much more often than the other owners and mine has the most corrosion, despite living in a garage and weekly cleaning, as well as liberal applications of anti corrosion sprays, the finish is weak, thin and poor and not really what you expect when paying so much for a bike.
As the GS became more popular due to long way they could not keep up with demand and as such corners were cut , we are now paying for that, I will keep mine as I love the way it rides ( as does my wife) and I will paint over the rusted areas with black fire paint ( properly prep of course) as I have done with the front cover and footpeg hangers, not really what I expected to be doing after spending so much on a bike, however my corrosion claim was knocked back and there is now not much else I can do, I will just ride the thing until it falls apart or they bring out something which I like more.
I agree with al the above blogs on quality apart from the underlined bit, which I simply don't think its true.
As I am actually a major in industrial design with a MechEng degree, let me explain: (some of you may want to skip it here)
At the most basic level (the subject is actually very complicated), complete machines and individual components are all engineered to specific lifing vs cost charts and quality of materials used vs cost- there are actually a few hundred different types, the aforementioned 2 just for the example. Every company, parts supplier etc cont use their own charts, after continuously monitoring , tweaking comparing with their peer group for similar items.
Most of these charts looks like a parabola (they aren't though).Using the horizontal axis as cost, if you plot the two lines on the same graph, they look similar (they start as upward sloping but straightish and go into parabolic shape 2/3 down effectively flattening out -
i.e you need an ever increasing amount of money to raise quality of materials or lifing (effectively the average expected life of the machine that a significant proportion of customers will keep it - for BMW cars its currently less than 50 months and falling).
When all of these "life charts" are done - a typical R&D path for a typical average car like a Ford Mondeo would contain about 50,000 life related studies vs cost for specific components, specific assemblies of components and eventually whole units- then it is decided on what cost to design for.
Its also worth noting that quality of components in engineering is defined as serviceable time at a given capacity level before failure, and type if failure. So perceived quality - GS not rusting fast - is different to actual quality (it may look tired but keeps going longer)
I.e a bearing that looks good with no rust working 1500 hrs at 90% capacity before disintegrating with no warning is a lower quality item than one that goes a bit rusty early, but giver 5000 hrs with regular wear rates before failing slowly.
In modern times, cost can be much better defined and budgeted for, and so can the lifing of components. I.e a bearing manufacturer can confidently say that 99.2% of type X bearing will last at least Y hours. That accuracy leads to tighter allowances in everything. When these new design criteria combine with the disposability and relative cheapness (all machines from a piaggio to a Bentley, to a helicopter are much cheaper today that they were 40 years ago by mile (inflation adjusted)), of everything, it leads to the manufacturers designing for less.
Its simple: why make a new 3 series (the typical upmarket saloon car benchmark) last 20 years, when there will be less than 0.3% of owners who ll keep it until then. Instead, you make it last to 100% of its intended quality for 3-5 years and then let it fall apart a lot faster than the old days, where the wear curves were smoother. The advance of electronics that have a digital (working/broken) failure pattern and a very fast path into obsoleteness obviously aid the above cause for cheaper, shorter life cycles.
The above patterns of industrial design can be seen obviously in our beloved bikes of all sorts, and other things: The tarmac on roads (its 3 times cheaper to resurface today than in 1970), electronics (obviously), domestic kit from roofing materials (the average kitched in the uk is less than 10 years old and falling - why build a stove to last 100 years?) all the way to carpets, clothing (the average shirt is 3.5 times cheaper today than 40 years ago and has cost 20 times less to make - all inflation adj) etc...
Why would BMW GS be any different?
