BMW Type 255 RS 500 Kompressor, 1939
1939 · BMW, Munich · 492cc supercharged flat-twin
Rotating view of a 3D model built for Manx Road Racer. A reconstruction from period photographs and drawings, not a surviving machine.
BMW's Type 255 was a racing flat-twin with a mechanical supercharger. From 492cc it produced 60 bhp at 7,000 rpm. It first raced at Berlin's Avus track in 1935.
Jock West, sales manager for BMW's British importer, finished sixth on it in the Senior TT. In 1938 BMW entered three riders: West, Karl Gall and Georg Meier. On the start line one of the mechanics, changing a spark plug on Meier's machine, stripped a cylinder-head thread. Meier set off on one cylinder and soon retired. He went on to win the 1938 500cc European championship.
In the 1939 Senior TT, run on 16 June over seven laps and 264 miles, Meier led from start to finish to win at 89.38 mph. West was second and Freddie Frith third on a Norton. Meier was the first rider from outside Britain to win the Senior, and the Kompressor the first supercharged machine to do so.
The machine came back to the Island long after the war. Meier rode it in a demonstration during the 1989 TT, and in 2014, seventy-five years after the win, his nephew Wolfgang Meier rode it on a lap of honour at the Classic TT.
About this model: the game model adds a spare-plug carrier, a fictional feature recalling the 1938 failure. It is not a documented part of the real machine.
Facts
- Race: 1939 Senior TT, 16 June, 7 laps, 264.11 miles
- Result: 1 Georg Meier (BMW) 89.38 mph, 2 Jock West (BMW), 3 Freddie Frith (Norton)
- Engine: 492cc supercharged flat-twin, 60 bhp at 7,000 rpm
Sources
- BMW Group Classic, press release on the 2014 Classic TT lap of honour (via MoreBikes)
- BMW Group press, "Seventy years ago: the compressor BMW scores a one-two victory in the Tourist Trophy"
- Classic Bike, "BMW Kompressor", September 2021 (via PressReader)
- Wikipedia, "Georg Meier" (1939 result table, 1938 plug failure)