2008 BMW Simple Concept: A Lean Machine With a Brain - AllCarIndex
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BMW’s 2008 Simple Concept is what happens when engineers get bored of arguing about whether a car should behave like a car or a bike—and decide it should do both. The result is a 450 kg tilting pod called SIMPLE, short for “Sustainable and Innovative Mobility Product for Low Energy Consumption.” No points for naming creativity, but plenty for engineering.
On paper, the Simple is technically a car. It’s got a roof, seats, and side panels to keep you from being intimately acquainted with rain, wind, and flying insects. But it borrows more from motorcycles than you might expect: it’s 110 cm wide—about the width of a superbike—and seats two people in tandem, like a sport touring bike with a very polite passenger.
The party trick? It leans. Properly. No joystick, no special rider input—just lean into the turn and the body follows. Most leaning concepts out there fudge it by tilting only the cabin, but BMW went all in: the whole vehicle leans like a motorcycle, without needing complex electronics to fake it. The hydraulic system stays out of it unless something weird happens—low-speed instability, parking, or if you try to Tokyo Drift your way out of a car meet.
With a drag coefficient of 0.18 and a kerb weight of just 450 kg, the Simple doesn’t need much power to get moving. BMW dropped in a 36 kW (roughly 48 horsepower) combustion engine, just enough to push it from 0–100 km/h in under ten seconds. It’s not a rocket, but it’s efficient—stupidly efficient. With help from a small electric motor, it sips just 6 kWh or 0.7 litres of petrol per 100 km. That’s around 2.0 L/100km, or roughly what a high-end blender drinks in a month.
Inside, the Simple’s cockpit is more spaceship than motorbike. Enclosed, quiet, and surprisingly safe for something so narrow, the idea was to give motorcycle agility without demanding that the driver dress like The Stig on casual Friday.
The Simple Concept was never destined for production, but it wasn’t built to be. It’s what happens when BMW lets its engineers sketch with fewer rules and more physics. Half car, half motorcycle, all strange. But in the best way.