Back in May 2018, BMW Motorrad unveiled a concept motorcycle, the 9cento (pronounced 'nove cento') at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in Italy. Now, a patent filed in the National Institute of Industrial Property (INP) in Brazil confirms that a production-ready version is already in the pipeline. A 2019 BMW Motorrad brochure, meanwhile, had the F 850 RS listed, and the manufacturer claimed that this was a typo, but that doesn't seem to be the case now. Our source claims that the bike is listed as the BMW F 850 RS in the patent filing.
The F 850 RS is expected to be powered by the same 853cc, parallel-twin engine used on the F 850 GS and the F 750 GS, but most likely in a different state of tune. This is further backed by the fact that the header pipes look identical to those on the GS bikes. This engine delivers 77hp and 83Nm of torque in the F 750 GS and 85hp and 92Nm of torque on the F 850 GS. It will be interesting to see how BMW tune this engine for the F 850 RS.
The patent image also reveals what the production F 850 RS will look like, and it’s evident that BMW hasn’t strayed too far from the original 9cento concept on which it is based. It looks like the BMW S 1000 XR sports-tourer and will likely be a touring-biased, partly faired version of the mid-capacity GS bikes. BMW uses the 'RS' (Reisesport, which translates to travel sport) suffix to identify its sport-tourers and the R 1250 RS is currently the only bike in the line-up using the nomenclature.
It’s also clear that the bike will sport alloy wheels and a suspension setup that is more in tune with its sport-touring intent. There is also a possibility that the BMW F 850 RS could be a replacement to the F 800 GT in international markets, but that remains to be seen.
Azaman Chothia
