Courtesy of Bruce Preston

Courtesy of Bruce Preston

A couple of  years ago I’ve bought a BMW R 51/2 from 1950 with sidecar. The Bike has matching Numbers 520503 (Frame & Engine). The bike was used by a man (now died) from 1951 to 1983 to sell Ice creams near Lugano in Switzerland.  Photos and information courtesy of Bruno Bonfanti.

I had gone through restoring BMW R51/2 VIN 520716 from a basket case that my mechanic found from a hidden storage in Bangkok Thailand. It took him 18 months to complete the job and it is in my collection with pride. I wrote to Andreas Harz at BMW Archive and received this note from him “The BMW R 51/2 VIN 520716 was manufactured on December 5th, 1950 and delivered on February 27th, 1951 to the BMW importer Nava Phanich Company in Bangkok. The bike came to Bangkok directly from Germany but I had tried to find out the first owner who bought it without any result. The registration record in Thailand was lost due to the big fire at the registration years ago.