Originally Posted by brakemeister

bikes with cars were born out of a necessity ...... at the time some 10/20 years ago the law in Germany and oyjer European countries were not allowing car dealers to give any discount more than 3 % of the value of the car( usually these discounts were mad e up in parts for the car) ...... In the 60 that worked out to be a pair of mats or maybe a free radio ...in the nineties every car had a radio and the mats overpriced as they can be never made it to that 3 % hurdle.....

SO some car companies " invented" bikes to give away with a car to close the deal ..... Porsche Mercedes BMW and many others ....

Usually these bikes are not worth the money they were supoosed to fetch on the open market , as they were in the 3 % range of the car compnies most sold vehicle , rather than what they were worth at a bike dealer .....

The R D for these bikes was never done by Car company people ( even if they tell you so ) The RD was always done by a bike compmapany or somebody like Leitner ( ATK fame , Horst Link) who designed the first Merceds folders ( which were modified AMP bikes and rather nice)

Today all the laws about discount are gone ( European union) and the bikes are just meandering along as being a huge pain in the butt for the car dealers.... who usually really hate them ..

lol

thor