Super MODELS
Fancy an ex-works GP racer or a factory trials iron? If the real thing’s beyond your means, Pere Tarragó can create you a wonderfully authentic replica
Somehow it seems appropriate that Pere Tarragó, creator of the finest and most intricate miniaturised motorcycles made in Europe – maybe the world – should live in Barcelona. For this is the European capital of motorcycling, where more people ride powered two-wheelers through its streets each day than anywhere else in the European Union.
The Catalan capital was also the crucible in which the Spanish motorcycle industry flourished during the regime of General Franco, but then died away with his passing in 1975, in the face of competition from Japan. So it’s an irony that today the only Bultaco and Montesa motorcycles still made there are the exquisite 1:5 scale models created by Tarragó in the workshop attached to his home in a Barcelona suburb.
These are breathtakingly executed, finely detailed and faithfully accurate works of two-wheeled art. They’re available as entirely handcrafted one-offs built to special order costing anywhere from €12,000 (£10,565*) upwards, or hand-assembled series production models constructed from components often manufactured in a local jewellery workshop from Tarragó’s patterns, and retailing for considerably less.
The Montesa Impala 250 and its essentially identical 125 sister that are the best sellers of Pere’s Classic Motor Models company, with 52 examples sold to date, can be yours for €2050 (£1804), while the Bultaco Metralla 250 of which 12 copies have found customers so far goes for €2,500 (£2201 – all prices plus tax). If your wallet doesn’t run to that, but you’re still after a display item to remind you of Spain’s glorious two-wheeled heritage, the engine for either bike can be yours for €250 (£220), or the fuel tank for €150 (£132), each mounted in a special display case. The complete bikes come well presented in a wooden box that’s just a bit better made than the rough wooden crates the full-sized originals were shipped in during their production runs.
Tarragó, 65, is one of those fortunate men who’s made his hobby his livelihood – a fact which allows him to shrug off the long days he spends seated at his workbench. Here, he hand-crafts the individual components comprising each of his creations – more than 500 of them– then assembles them into a finished model which is visually identical to the original motorcycle. Formerly an electronics engineer, he previously owned a hi-fi audio equipment store in downtown Barcelona (he was a Bang & Olufsen dealer) before selling it in 2007, just on the cusp of the economic downturn, in order to switch
careers and become a full-time model builder. In between modelling projects, he and his wife explored Europe on the Harley-davidson Heritage Softail Classic that shares his garage with a Moto Beta 250 trail bike. That turned out to be an astute decision – but how come?
“I’d been making models ever since I was a kid; first with Meccano, then small-scale copies – first of cars, then ships, aircraft, and finally motorcycles,” says Pere. “I made my first two-wheeled model in 1995, which was the 1972 Bultaco Metralla in 1:6 scale, but to do so I had to make each link of the chain by hand, which was very time-consuming and rather boring. Still, it was displayed at the big Auto Retro show here in Barcelona, and the response was quite overwhelming – many people asked me to make one for them, too. Then a company in Japan started selling chains in 1:5 scale, so I had to completely remake the Bultaco in a different scale to suit that! I considered the original one as a prototype – I learnt a lot from making it, which still stands me in good stead today. So next I built a Montesa Brio in 1996, and three years later an Ossa 150, then an MV Agusta 175 Squalo, which was my first four-stroke.
“By now I’d begun to think about doing this as a business – until then, it was just a spare-time hobby. In 2005 I finished building a Montesa Impala, which I again displayed at Auto Retro, and had many requests to make copies. I thought: well, I enjoy doing this, and it means I can work at home without having to commute to the centre of Barcelona each day, or paying a heavy rent to run the store, with all the worry of employing people. So I sold the hi-fi business in 2006– just at the right time, as it happened – and all I’ve done since then is make models. Every time I do a new one, I learn something more – you never stop devising new techniques to get greater authenticity.”
And that’s the key word for Tarragó’s creations, because his models are acclaimed for their attention to detail – as well as their functionality. The engines don’t actually fire up and run, but that’s about the only thing which doesn’t work just like the full-size component it replicates. The drive shaft on the vintage BMW R32 he made actually rotates, though it’s the rear wheel that drives it, not the engine. Same goes for the chains on other bikes, while the kickstarts on all his road bike models kick down and then spring back up again, as do the gearlevers, and the forks and shocks all compress and rebound just like the originals.
The shocks are all three-way adjustable for spring preload, while the brake shoes of his intricately replicated drum brakes expand and contract when you pull the lever. The headlights and tail-lights even work, too, thanks to an artfully concealed tiny lithium battery.
These are true fifth-size replicas of the original motorcycles, manufactured in authentic – that word again – materials like steel, brass, lead or aluminium, not plastic. In creating them, Pere employs many of the techniques used to make the originals, including sandcasting and lost-wax casting, machining components on his high precision lathe, and even using carbon-fibre – though not to save weight, but to obtain complex shapes more easily. Here’s how.
After choosing the next new model to make – whether it’s a one-off commission from a single customer or a series production model which still requires a prototype to be handcrafted for copying – Pere first has to obtain an example of the original motorcycle to replicate. That’s one reason why, until now, most of the bikes he’s built have been Spanish models, original examples of which are plentifully available locally. Besides the Metralla, Brio and Impala, the dozen-plus miniatures he’s made to date also include the Derbi 50c RAN (Replica Angel Nieto) customer GP racer, Bultaco Sherpa T trials bike, and street bikes like the Ossa 150 and Spanish-made Moto Guzzi 65.
His next project is a 250cc Ossa MAR (Mick Andrews Replica) trials bike – and there on the workbench at the time of my visit was an original example which Pere was in the process of painstakingly measuring up and photographing in minute detail. “I take around 600-800 photos of each bike, and produce a detailed scale drawing by hand of each component I must make, with all relevant measurements which I can then reduce to one-fifth scale,” he explains. “I also study the handbook and service manual, if they exist, then I start work to build the model. Whether I’m making a one-off example for a customer or a series production prototype, the procedure is the same.”
Each original takes 500-600 hours of his time to complete, depending on the complexity, with each day’s work carefully noted down in his logbook for each creation. The longest so far has been the 618 hours he spent creating a perfect small-scale replica of the 250cc four-cylinder Benelli with which Tarquinio Provini won the 1964 Spanish GP
‘THE BRAKE SHOES OF THE INTRICATELY REPLICATED DRUM BRAKES EXPAND AND CONTRACT WHEN YOU PULL THE LEVER’