Article by Bishonen Works website. British Auto Fabrica recently unveiled its latest project, the “Type 18”, a vaguely futuristic looking scrambler based on the extremely “customizable” BMW R nineT. It is a bike commissioned by the same Bavarian company with the aim of making it a “lookout” of the recent Wheels & Waves festival in Biarritz, France, a goal that can be said to have been fully achieved…
After a visit to the BMW Museum in Munich to find the right inspiration, the brothers Bujar and Gazmend Muharremi, founders of Auto Fabrica, decided to model their “Type 18” in order to recall the past “aeronautics” of the house of the propeller, but without losing sight of the minimalist approach that represents a bit ‘their trademark.
To give life to the “Type 18”, Auto Fabrica started from a standard R nineT Scrambler (click here for our test) adding some parts from other models of the nineT range, such as the inverted fork “taken” from a R nineT Roadster (and then entrusted to Maxton Engineering to blacken, shorten and optimize it with its SD25 cartridges), while the rims come from a R nineT Racer.
Auto Fabrica has also taken care “in the first instance” of the manual realization of the fascinating exhaust in sandblasted stainless steel, of the Alcantara saddle and its sub-frame and of all the LED lights and relative brackets, realized with 3D printing. Several other elements, such as footrests, levers, valve covers and belt covers, as well as caps and screws, come from the line of accessories Option 719 of the same BMW.
Other notable ingredients in the recipe that generated the BMW R nineT “Type 18” are the Renthal branded semi-handles and grips and the GP10 rear shock absorber supplied by Maxton Engineering. The instrumentation is the original one, but “reworked” by Gauge Instruments to better adapt to the aesthetic language chosen for this particular project.
In the end it took more than a year to “give birth” to Auto Fabrica’s vision – mainly because of the complex bodywork, entirely handcrafted by the two brothers at their Southend-on-Sea site – and the final aesthetic impact of the bike seems to be suspended halfway between “retro” and “futuristic” elements, with the very high build quality and abundance of refined details linking these two souls.
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