Success in the desert

In the eighties, the BMW off-road racers were drawn to the desert. The occasion was the “Paris-Dakar”, the toughest rally in the world, first held in 1979. In 1981, the Frenchman Hubert Auriol gained the first victory for BMW, a feat he was able to repeat in 1983. In 1984 and 1985 it was Gaston Rahier who made first place for BMW. But BMW was not only successful in the Paris-Dakar rally, there were also victories in the Pharaoh’s Rally and the Baja-California. In 1987, BMW brought its company involvement to an end and private riders subsequently made the headlines. For example, Eddy Hau won the marathon rating for near-serial production motorcycles on his BMW in the Paris-Dakar rally of 1988, and in 1992 the BMW engineer Jutta Kleinschmidt won the women’s section of this event.