It was the year 2000 when BMW introduced the C1, a peculiar scooter that lasted only two years in the market and was characterized by having a windshield, roof, seat with backrest and headrest and even seatbelt. The C1 was a BMW attempt to attract owners of small cars to their range of motorcycles. Thanks to the roof and seat belt, the scooter could be used without a helmet.
However, the bike was quickly discontinued, because, despite the rupture of its proposal, it failed to win over an audience that was not convinced by the mix of car and motorcycle characteristics that it proposed. In spite of everything, it does not seem that BMW has forgotten the C1 because recently a patent registered in November of 2017 has been leaked that contemplates the creation of a modular body similar to that of the C1 for the C Evolution, the electric motorbike of BMW.
In the filtered designs, it was revealed how the body would be anchored to a C Evolution chassis, which would include, among other things, a roof, a full seat, and a storage area. Given its electrical nature, this bike also reminds us of the first prototype of a battery-powered scooter developed by BMW, the C1-E presented in 2009. This prototype was presented seven years after the disappearance of the C1 and consisted of combining the original design of the old scooter covered with a 100% electric motorization.
The most interesting thing about the modular design presented by BMW is that it could be easily implemented in already manufactured bikes, so if a user decided later that he would like his scooter to have a roof, it could be easily installed by separating the original body from the chassis. In addition, everything seems to indicate that this solution could also be applied to motorcycles with thermal engines, not only electric.
At the moment, it is not clear that BMW is going to launch a roof version of the C Evolution or other bikes of its range because the failure of the C1 is still difficult to forget. In addition, the poor commercial performance achieved in Europe by the Renault Twizy , an electric quadricycle that mixes some characteristics of scooter with others of car leads us to think that the opinion of the public in relation to these “experiments” is still very similar to early 2000, when the C1 was revealed to the world.
