Author Alex Wright, Wollaston BMW
Back in February 2014, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the 2014 Motorrad new season launch in Majorca. A stunning hotel in the hills overlooking Palma that was full of all things Motorrad. What a recipe for a great weekend away!
The format was simple. For each new model, we would spend a couple of hours in the classroom being taught about every detail of the bike and then get kitted up and head out into the hills to find out what they were like to ride. My job can be really boring sometimes!! 😊
For me, the highlight of the weekend was the RnineT. What a special bike!!
In the classroom, our German friends explained the idea behind the bike as well as its unique features. We were told that the RnineT was kept simple by design. A raw motorcycle that was quite unusual as all the other models launched that weekend were dripping with technology. I love that about the RnineT. It’s simple and its personality can’t help but create a unique riding emotion.
The biggest surprise for me was when the boys and girls from Berlin announced that although there would be BMW accessories for the RnineT, they actually wanted to encourage these bikes to be customised. The bike is the perfect platform for this and it certainly worked. I see RnineT’s in and out of our dealership every day and it’s rare to see two bikes that look the same. Every owner seems to add some personal touch that separates their bike from the next.
So, with a growing demand to customise more and more of our customers bikes, ‘Custom Legends’ was born.
So, the RnineT sparked the interest for our customers to customise their bikes, but it didn’t stop there. We are doing more and more custom jobs for our customers. Models customised include: a Lava Orange K1600 Bagger, an R18 First Edition, R1200GS’s and most recently an R1250R.
One of our customers, ‘Matt’, came to me in October last year with an idea. He loved the ‘HP’ colours on the R1250R but wanted something a little different, something that stood out from the crowd.
He explained in detail how he wanted his dream bike to look and by February he was riding away a very happy chappy! The pictures below show the before and after. What a transformation!
Every one of these projects so far has been an absolute pleasure for us. It’s what we do. We live and breath bikes and when customers like Matt ride away with smiles a mile wide, it makes what we do all the more worthwhile. I can’t wait to crack on with the next project!
