BMW R51/3
motorcycle
The BMW R51/3 was BMW's second post-World War II 500 cc motorcycle, following the briefly produced R51/2. It featured a flat-twin engine and exposed drive shaft. In 1951, the R51/3 succeeded and modernized the 1950 R51/2, which was essentially a pre-war design that was produced after the war. The 600 cc R67, R67/2, and R67/3 series and the more sporting R68 model also followed the R51/2.
History
Following World War II, Germany was precluded from producing motorcycles of any sort by the Allies. When the ban was lifted, in
Allied-controlled Western Germany, BMW had to start from scratch. There were no plans, blueprints, or schematic drawings. Company engineers had to use surviving pre-war motorcycles to create new plans. In 1948, it introduced the 250 cc R24, which was essentially a pre-war R23, complete with rigid rear end.
When larger machines were permitted, BMW introduced its R51/2 in 1950, a model that was in production for only one year and that was essentially a pre-war BMW produced after the war.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q796722. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1950 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “BMW R51/3” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.