Nostalgia is easy to fake and very hard to earn. This one is earned in the tape lines and the depth of the white.
The brief for Trikolor arrived as a single photograph of a paddock at the Nurburgring, taken by the client's father in the early seventies. Not a specification, not a parts list. A feeling. Our job was to build a motorcycle that gives you the same feeling standing in front of it fifty years later.
The white is not white. It is a pearl ground with a warm base beneath it, so that in overcast light it reads bone and in direct sun it lifts. The band is laid by hand in three colours with a hair line of ground colour between each, and every edge is buried under clear and cut back flat, so you can run a fingernail across the stripe and feel nothing at all.
The quarter fairing is a hand formed alloy shell with a period profile and a modern screen radius. The lens is genuine yellow glass. The rims are anodised in a blue chosen to argue with the stripe rather than agree with it, which is exactly the kind of decision the era would have made.
Written down, because it will be checked.
Every commission ships with a bound build record: photographs of each stage, part numbers, supplier provenance and the name of the person who did the work.
- Donor
- 1994 BMW K1100RS, dry stored, imported from Munich
- Engine
- 1092cc DOHC 16 valve longitudinal inline four, rebuilt, satin black
- Fairing
- Hand formed alloy quarter fairing, period profile, bubble screen
- Lighting
- Genuine yellow glass lens in a polished bezel
- Bodywork
- Hand formed tank and floating tail, period cafe proportion
- Finish
- Pearl white over warm ground, hand laid three colour band, buried and flatted
- Wheels
- Cast alloy, blue anodised, polished and drilled rotors on gold carriers
- Suspension
- Rebuilt forks with progressive rate springs, twin rear units
- Seat
- Black hide, single hump, hand rolled edge
- Fasteners
- Stainless, polished, period correct head profile
- Build time
- Approximately twelve months
- Availability
- Open to commission