I have the 2013 C650GT since June 2013 and 22.000 km on it. It is a great pleasure to drive it. I drive it to work every day. I like the comfort, legroom, storage, the power and the handling due to the low centre of gravity of this bike. However I have been disappointed by the quality of this motorcycle. It started early on. After the 1000km service I started to get engine overheating alarms. It has taken three months for BMW to figure it out. The bike was in the shop for weeks. The oil pump got replaced, the coolant pump got replaced, they worked on the brake of the side stand because allegedly it pulled the brake of the rear wheel which caused the engine overheating. Every time something else was found to be the source of the problem. Ultimately the engine overheating problem was due to a little pipe in the oil system that got squeezed after the 1000km service. That took three months to figure out. BTW, there is not temperature gauge on this bike either, but there is a totally unreadable and rather useless RPM meter. A 4000€ Vespa has a temperature gauge! After all this and because it took so long to fix, they promised to extend my warranty - but then didn't remember that when I turned up to extend my warranty. Once the gas tank cover broke off while at the dealer. After another engine overheating investigation session of several days, I got the bike back from BMW with three bars on the fuel gauge. I then ran out of gas on the motorway while on the left lane in heavy traffic. I had to cross two lanes to get to the emergency lane and then get the bike towed to a petrol station! When the first cold mornings came along a couple of months later, my saddle heater gave up. BMW replaced the saddle. However, the saddle was bent and didn't properly seal the luggage compartment. My helmet and gloves got wet when it rained. They told me it would go away and bend back into place just by sitting on it. I had to bend the new saddle back in a position so that it would seal the luggage compartment. Following that the grip controls started to get stuck, indicators, horn, info and trip buttons all got stuck in cold/wet weather conditions. So I had to take the bike back in once again. The next thing that happened was the distribution chain tensioner that started to make a terrible noise. It took over two months before that part got replaced by a new re-engineered one. Since the beginning, the clutch is screaming when you pull away. They rubbed the clutch at the BMW dealer to make it go away, but it just comes back every once in a while. Makes one feel very embarrassed when pulling away on a 12.500€ scooter with a horrible noise like that. The clock is consistently slow, it does not keep time well at all. At one point it got stuck when I switched from daylight saving time. Then on the next refueling occasion, the computer reset itself with a loud beep and then I could re-program the clock - but it is still slow. I went back to the shop to get new firmware loaded into the computer. The clock is still slow. The lock on my original BMW topcase has become impossible to use - I had to wait 2 months for the topcase to arrive with the proper lock that matches with my key... Paid for it in advance. The alarm goes off randomly in the morning when I put the key in - weird because the bike was left untouched in the garage all night. The service of 10.000 km was just over 400€ as explained by the BMW salesman. The 20.000 km service costed me 1070€! - BMW is telling me that scooters are more expensive to operated maintain than regular motorcycles, it's more work to take covers off etc. OK, fair enough but that was not my experience with my previous scooters... Now three weeks ago the kickstand broke off. One bolt of the kickstand support was missing (yes,missing!), the second one broke off. They charged me 830€ for this - my bike is no longer under warranty - I could not get an extension because my bike was a couple of weeks over the 21 month limit. BMW then agreed to pay back 360€... Now my handle bar buttons are getting stuck again in wet weather conditions... So yes, this is really a nice scooter to ride and I enjoy a lot riding it in busy city traffic, on the highway and on winding roads but for me it is extremely expensive to maintain and fragile. After two and a half years and 22.000km, it is certainly not up the the standard where I would expect a premium brand like BMW to be. I had expected to have peace of mind when I dropped 12.500€ of cash for this bike. I have written to BMW about my experience but there is hardly any response. Another disappointment! So it is great to see BMW are making progress on the new version of the C650GT and the C600Sport, with industry first features, improved safety and comfort but I would like to see BMW focus on the quality issues first. For me this is my every day commuter bike and I need to be able to depend on it, not have to spend my time riding to the dealer in between service intervals for all kinds of issues that are now making the scooter cost prohibitive. When I asked for the resale value if I would buy a new bike at BMW, I got even more depressed. That tells me there is a real problem here. So please BMW, get your act together, put quality first again and I may consider buying another motorcycle from you again! Apologies for the long rant.
Domi Greet I have a 2016 bmw 650gt with molossi variator that shred motorcycles!! It’s an animal!! I dusted off a Harley street glide yesterday that couldn’t catch me!!!
I am sorry for your story..I didn't know that BMW does such things at so much money invested... I have a 2016 Burgman 650 Executive and this one is awesome..but still, only 11.000km on board. I liked the BMW for the electron stuff's and gadgets, seemed like more advanced, with all that sensors and computer controls, and everything, but after reading your story I kinda appreciate my Burgman more. Can't wait to get it out off the garage..next week.
Domi Greet, I agree with you in every word, typical BMW, all for glory, no essence. I am an owner of a vstrom 650 and a Kymco Downtown 300i, monsters of reliability and safety and practicality. Sell it no matter what and buy something only Japanese or Korean, you will find your piece of mind, i promise you!
I’m sick of people babying this monster!! I can’t wait to start posting videos of me embarrassing street glides and 600s with my 2016 BMW 650gt with malossi variator . And this from a guy that had a 2015 Honda f6b plus I have a 2014 bmw 650gt I’m riding in a couple videos I post on here.
I just came back from EU and saw this kind of scooters everywhere. I’m wondering if somebody has them in the US .... do you need a motorcycle license to ride them ? Insurance ? Also, I always had Bmw cars and I know how expensive the maintainer gets after 100.000 miles, is this also expensive to fix ? Thanks in advance
Hi all, In advance sorry for my english :) I would like to know your advice. I bought almost new C 650GT scooter and saw in it a few problems and would like to understand if these problems just in my scooter or all scooters of the brand BMW. 1. CVT pulls scooter and trembles at the start and if you drive slowly when I slowly touched gas. 2. When turning at slow speed scooter wraps the steering wheel in the direction of rotation. Using both hands, you can cope with it but the one hand it is very difficult. 3. Unlike other maxi scooters Tmax for example, BMW had horrible nasty sound. As if there is not only the engine of KYMCO and everything else too. Have you met such a problem with your scooter? Thank you in advance for your reply!
+Alexander Drutz I don't understand nr1 please explain better...For problem nr 2 I think that is because of the heavy weight of the scooter and like you said no problem with both hands on the handlebars. 3 there are always aftermarket exhausts that make your BMW sound better ;-) Greets team belmoto
hi, wonder this bwm has some sort of hybrid system ? for example idling engine stop. i wanna buy this 650 if they have some system i mentioned. for fuel efficiency.
What do you mean by idelling engine stop? The cars that kill the engine at a stop and restart them when you press the accelerator to go, burn more fuel with the restarts than just idelling for a minute or two. Plus they wear out their batteries, and starter motors. Scooters already get better mpg than cars and motorcycles. What more do you want? The electric scooters and motorcycles don't have enough range, take too long to recharge, and the batteries need expensive replacement every year or two. This is a Maxi scooter, for highway riding and touring. You can get 100-110mpg on a 50 cc scooter if you don't need to go faster than 35 mph. A 150 cc scooter will get you around town, even two up, and run as fast as 50-55 mph for short jogs. They can get you around 80 mpg. The BMW C650gt can get 60 mpg driving hard, and if you baby it for mpg I have gotten 67 mpg once. I drive mine two up most of the time and full throttle all I can. I have managed as low as 40 mpg running two up racing every bike I came upon one day, but gee it's nice blowing by a Harley, on a scooter.
I have the 2013 C650GT since June 2013 and 22.000 km on it.
It is a great pleasure to drive it. I drive it to work every day.
I like the comfort, legroom, storage, the power and the handling due to the low centre of gravity of this bike.
However I have been disappointed by the quality of this motorcycle.
It started early on. After the 1000km service I started to get engine overheating alarms.
It has taken three months for BMW to figure it out. The bike was in the shop for weeks.
The oil pump got replaced, the coolant pump got replaced, they worked on the brake of the side stand because allegedly it pulled the brake of the rear wheel which caused the engine overheating.
Every time something else was found to be the source of the problem.
Ultimately the engine overheating problem was due to a little pipe in the oil system that got squeezed after the 1000km service. That took three months to figure out.
BTW, there is not temperature gauge on this bike either, but there is a totally unreadable and rather useless RPM meter. A 4000€ Vespa has a temperature gauge!
After all this and because it took so long to fix, they promised to extend my warranty - but then didn't remember that when I turned up to extend my warranty.
Once the gas tank cover broke off while at the dealer.
After another engine overheating investigation session of several days, I got the bike back from BMW with three bars on the fuel gauge. I then ran out of gas on the motorway while on the left lane in heavy traffic. I had to cross two lanes to get to the emergency lane and then get the bike towed to a petrol station!
When the first cold mornings came along a couple of months later, my saddle heater gave up.
BMW replaced the saddle.
However, the saddle was bent and didn't properly seal the luggage compartment. My helmet and gloves got wet when it rained. They told me it would go away and bend back into place just by sitting on it. I had to bend the new saddle back in a position so that it would seal the luggage compartment.
Following that the grip controls started to get stuck, indicators, horn, info and trip buttons all got stuck in cold/wet weather conditions. So I had to take the bike back in once again.
The next thing that happened was the distribution chain tensioner that started to make a terrible noise. It took over two months before that part got replaced by a new re-engineered one.
Since the beginning, the clutch is screaming when you pull away. They rubbed the clutch at the BMW dealer to make it go away, but it just comes back every once in a while. Makes one feel very embarrassed when pulling away on a 12.500€ scooter with a horrible noise like that.
The clock is consistently slow, it does not keep time well at all. At one point it got stuck when I switched from daylight saving time. Then on the next refueling occasion, the computer reset itself with a loud beep and then I could re-program the clock - but it is still slow. I went back to the shop to get new firmware loaded into the computer. The clock is still slow.
The lock on my original BMW topcase has become impossible to use - I had to wait 2 months for the topcase to arrive with the proper lock that matches with my key... Paid for it in advance.
The alarm goes off randomly in the morning when I put the key in - weird because the bike was left untouched in the garage all night.
The service of 10.000 km was just over 400€ as explained by the BMW salesman. The 20.000 km service costed me 1070€! - BMW is telling me that scooters are more expensive to operated maintain than regular motorcycles, it's more work to take covers off etc. OK, fair enough but that was not my experience with my previous scooters...
Now three weeks ago the kickstand broke off. One bolt of the kickstand support was missing (yes,missing!), the second one broke off. They charged me 830€ for this - my bike is no longer under warranty - I could not get an extension because my bike was a couple of weeks over the 21 month limit. BMW then agreed to pay back 360€...
Now my handle bar buttons are getting stuck again in wet weather conditions...
So yes, this is really a nice scooter to ride and I enjoy a lot riding it in busy city traffic, on the highway and on winding roads but for me it is extremely expensive to maintain and fragile.
After two and a half years and 22.000km, it is certainly not up the the standard where I would expect a premium brand like BMW to be. I had expected to have peace of mind when I dropped 12.500€ of cash for this bike.
I have written to BMW about my experience but there is hardly any response. Another disappointment!
So it is great to see BMW are making progress on the new version of the C650GT and the C600Sport, with industry first features, improved safety and comfort but I would like to see BMW focus on the quality issues first. For me this is my every day commuter bike and I need to be able to depend on it, not have to spend my time riding to the dealer in between service intervals for all kinds of issues that are now making the scooter cost prohibitive. When I asked for the resale value if I would buy a new bike at BMW, I got even more depressed. That tells me there is a real problem here.
So please BMW, get your act together, put quality first again and I may consider buying another motorcycle from you again!
Apologies for the long rant.
Domi Greet I have a 2016 bmw 650gt with molossi variator that shred motorcycles!! It’s an animal!! I dusted off a Harley street glide yesterday that couldn’t catch me!!!
I am sorry for your story..I didn't know that BMW does such things at so much money invested...
I have a 2016 Burgman 650 Executive and this one is awesome..but still, only 11.000km on board. I liked the BMW for the electron stuff's and gadgets, seemed like more advanced, with all that sensors and computer controls, and everything, but after reading your story I kinda appreciate my Burgman more. Can't wait to get it out off the garage..next week.
Domi Greet, I agree with you in every word, typical BMW, all for glory, no essence. I am an owner of a vstrom 650 and a Kymco Downtown 300i, monsters of reliability and safety and practicality. Sell it no matter what and buy something only Japanese or Korean, you will find your piece of mind, i promise you!
Your bike must've been built on a Friday afternoon.... (old joke for badly running machines...)
How is your bike riding now since you have written this comment? Curious have things improved?
I rode a 2013 C 650 GT from Jacksonville FL to San Diego CA in 45 hours and was very comfortable and felling safe on the road at Interstate speeds.
Oscar, how relaxed is it at interstate speeds? Is it kind of noisy?
I have one and its great! All the giddy up of a shifting bike without all that work. Just get on it and go, and go anywhere!
+Terrell Davis Hop on , hop off :)
LOL. My little secretary and I have been together 40 years. Still riding off into the sunset 🌇
Well done. This review was fun, informative and a pleasure to watch :-)
"uh pigeon" lol funny guy. Great, comprehensive review, thanks dude!
I’m sick of people babying this monster!! I can’t wait to start posting videos of me embarrassing street glides and 600s with my 2016 BMW 650gt with malossi variator . And this from a guy that had a 2015 Honda f6b plus I have a 2014 bmw 650gt I’m riding in a couple videos I post on here.
Regensburg germany --Deva romania 1200 km in one dai 13 hour ,thanks bmw 650 gt
One of the finer points, that you left out, is that you're riding in EUROPE...! Nice ride... Great Vid..! Thanks... Gordon in Maryland...
Who's the nice girl at the end Mr K? Interesting video. I almost got myself a C650GT last year but was put off by its price :(
+Sky Rider Soon my friend. We will elaborate about who are the persons in the end of the video :) Very soon :)
When this scooter will be available in Bangladesh???
I just came back from EU and saw this kind of scooters everywhere. I’m wondering if somebody has them in the US .... do you need a motorcycle license to ride them ? Insurance ? Also, I always had Bmw cars and I know how expensive the maintainer gets after 100.000 miles, is this also expensive to fix ? Thanks in advance
such a great scooter, the only thing i don't like is that annoying sound when you move up and down the windshield
+Joakim Joakim the sound I make? Or the sound of your BMW CT650GT? Greets
Belmoto i was joking man , i meant the sound you make , unfortunately i don't have a 650gt
tmax wheeling on my channel
Hi all,
In advance sorry for my english :) I would like to know your advice.
I bought almost new C 650GT scooter and saw in it a few problems and would like to understand if these problems just in my scooter or all scooters of the brand BMW. 1. CVT pulls scooter and trembles at the start and if you drive slowly when I slowly touched gas. 2. When turning at slow speed scooter wraps the steering wheel in the direction of rotation. Using both hands, you can cope with it but the one hand it is very difficult.
3. Unlike other maxi scooters Tmax for example, BMW had horrible nasty sound. As if there is not only the engine of KYMCO and everything else too.
Have you met such a problem with your scooter?
Thank you in advance for your reply!
+Alexander Drutz I don't understand nr1 please explain better...For problem nr 2 I think that is because of the heavy weight of the scooter and like you said no problem with both hands on the handlebars. 3 there are always aftermarket exhausts that make your BMW sound better ;-)
Greets team belmoto
What country is this ?
Would like to know the MSRP in US dollars, please. .
+Susan LaDuke www.motorcycle-usa.com/72515/buyers-guide-specs/2015-bmw-c-650-gt/
hi, wonder this bwm has some sort of hybrid system ? for example idling engine stop. i wanna buy this 650 if they have some system i mentioned. for fuel efficiency.
+Wan Azri why not consider the electric one?
What do you mean by idelling engine stop? The cars that kill the engine at a stop and restart them when you press the accelerator to go, burn more fuel with the restarts than just idelling for a minute or two. Plus they wear out their batteries, and starter motors.
Scooters already get better mpg than cars and motorcycles. What more do you want? The electric scooters and motorcycles don't have enough range, take too long to recharge, and the batteries need expensive replacement every year or two. This is a Maxi scooter, for highway riding and touring. You can get 100-110mpg on a 50 cc scooter if you don't need to go faster than 35 mph. A 150 cc scooter will get you around town, even two up, and run as fast as 50-55 mph for short jogs. They can get you around 80 mpg.
The BMW C650gt can get 60 mpg driving hard, and if you baby it for mpg I have gotten 67 mpg once. I drive mine two up most of the time and full throttle all I can. I have managed as low as 40 mpg running two up racing every bike I came upon one day, but gee it's nice blowing by a Harley, on a scooter.
Dame los precios
does it have a cup holder?
it has handlebars :)
No, but I wish it had electronic cruise control.
Yamaha tmax DX 530 or tmax 560 has cruise control
Sounds like a commercial. No real review. So what was your purpose just showing all the information on the computer and handlebars.?