The BMW Museum is the first port of call for any petrolhead visiting Munich. But there’s an even more extraordinary collection of machinery just down the road, at the BMW Group Classic headquarters.
Set inside the original Bayerische Motoren Werke factory, BMW Group Classic houses offices, archives, conference rooms and a café. But it’s also home to a small gathering of rare and vintage BMW motorcycles and cars, and a couple of laboratory-level workshops.

Access to this remarkable hoard is by special appointment only?but on this day we had one such appointment. And it was during a behind-the-scenes tour that I stumbled upon this vintage beauty.
To be honest, at first I had no idea what I was looking at. So our guide graciously explained the history of the supercharged 1929 BMW WR 750 Kompressor. Then he threw in a plot twist: this isn’t a restored WR 750, but a complete nuts and bolts replica.
It’s been executed so well, even an expert would find it virtually impossible to tell it apart from the real deal.
The WR stands for Werksrennmotorräder (works race bike), which is exactly what the WR 750 was. It was a technological tour-de-force, built to take on speed records and racing championships. They got the former right; Ernst Jakob Henne set a land speed record of 134.68 mph on a WR 750 in 1929.

The WR 750 had a 750 cc four stroke flat twin with overhead valves, a supercharger wedged between the seat and gearbox, and a single carb. It had ...