Extreme looking R18 special breaks cover ahead of launch
BMW reveal another outlandish take on the R18… a bike they say anybody can make their own
BMW have unveiled their most outrageous custom yet ahead of the official launch of their new R18 but small-scale, DIY customisation has always been at the heart of the bike. “There is big chunk of market out there with cruisers, but we’ve never had a bike to attack this segment,” says Edgar Heinrich, Head of Design at BMW Motorrad. “If you’re going to go into another segment, you have to stick to the rules and the rules are usually set by the big players. We set the rules with the GS and the RT, other guys set the rules for the big cruisers. The basics are ‘long and low’ but engine size itself is a feature. “For this bike, we also wanted it to be easy to customise. You don’t have to be an engineer. You don’t have to understand what’s going on inside. You should be able to decide what you want to change to make it yours and do it. We think we have designed it in a way that anyone can customise it.” Making the bare bones of the bike easy to personalise has allowed Bernhard Naumann, who is also known as ‘Blechmann’ (German for ‘tin man’) to take on the big bruiser with his distinctive sheet metal work. Naumann’s design is dominated by the headlight cowling complete with a nostril-like yellow lamp aperture and screen, while the fuel tank has been reworked to look sportier and narrower, exposing even more of the 1800cc ‘Big Boxer’ engine and complementing the new clip-on handlebars. At the rear, the original subframe is retained but a new single seat unit has been created over the top with a brown leather saddle pad and retro buckles.
The whole bike is finished in black with classic BMW white pinstriping and took Naumann and his team 450 hours to complete. This style-focused design is new for BMW, admits Heinrich: “If you look at designs from
20 years ago it was all about engineering, innovation, quality – this typical German approach for doing something. If it comes out looking stupid, maybe it wasn’t so important. But things are different now. No one needs a bike, they buy them because they want them and it displays their character.”
BMW’s ‘First Edition’ R18 is available to order now at £18,995.