BMW R32

BMW's first motorcycle, from 1923, is the rare case of a layout so right that a company has never let it go. Max Friz set a flat twin with its cylinders jutting into the airstream on either side, cooling both equally, and sent power to the rear wheel through a shaft rather than a chain. Neither idea was new on its own. Putting them together in one tidy, symmetrical package was, and a century later BMW's boxer bikes still read as descendants of this one. For anyone interested in how engineering becomes identity, this is the starting point.