Want an M1300GS?
If you can’t wait for BMW to build one, a Swiss supermoto racer has the £34,000 solution
Deep within the bowels of BMW’S R&D centre in Munich, you can bet your trousers that engineers are putting the finishing touches to the M1300GS, rumoured to go on sale later this year. But if you don’t want to wait, how about this custom made by Swiss racer and BMW dealer Daniel Weidmann?
‘We have some good friends in BMW in Munich who work in the customising department,’ Daniel tells Bike, ‘and they sent messages of congratulations when they saw this bike, but unfortunately they did not tell me if it looked like the real M1300GS. This is purely our interpretation of how one could look.’
Most of Daniel’s efforts went on the tail, which is much slimmer than the standard bike’s, which has to hold all the pannier supports and rear radar gubbins. ‘The tail is all new and built by us,’ he says. ‘We wanted to make it look slimmer, with a tail tidy and minimal numberplate holder.
The trickiest part was removing the rear-view radar from the tail section without causing any failure warnings in the cockpit. This sounds easy, but it’s actually very difficult.’ Then it was just a case of adding lightness. ‘We stripped everything down at the front, removing the windscreen and spoilers. The front fender has also been cut to make it more of a race style. Our background is racing supermotos in the Swiss championship, so that’s why we have an eye for really slim, racy bikes. This one started out as a fully-equipped GS, and the target was to strip everything down to see what we could lose.
‘We haven’t weighed it yet because we finished it 30 minutes before it was due to be transported to a show, but my guess is that we’ve taken off about 7kg – a lot of it from the wheels, which are now forged rather than cast. Unfortunately, they’re not 17in ones, because these are not available from BMW yet.’
How much do we need for Daniel to make another? ‘Well, this one sold at the show for £34,000 (€40,000), so that’s what I’d need.’
‘Purely our interpretation of how one could look’