The R90S is an icon. It comes from a time where bikers were rebels. It's a cool bike
from the 70s. The bike has a real great soul. It was the first bike which had a
designer working on it and we decided to bring out this old jewel and we cut it
in a way that nobody expected from BMW Motorrad. We were looking for a partner
with the right spirit and knowledge how to build a high-performance bike and we
found him actually in California. I grew up in Long Beach in Southern California
and I think that the culture I was surrounded with has a big influence on
me today. Motorcycles are a huge part of my life. It's really how I express who I
am and what I'm about. It seems that no matter what I look at it has an influence
and when BMW approached us to do the R90S homage project I was really excited
about it but at the same time I was also very curious as to where we would start
and where they want us to finish up. I mean the biggest challenge was you know
we needed to convince Roland Sands to build this bike for us. I thought of
bringing over some sketches to him but then I you know we got to bring him a
prototype of this bike. One week later we were there in California with a bike
thing. He just started doing burnouts in the yards and then he came back and his
eyes were just beaming and that was it. It was just such a spectacular crazy
moment in this project. With what BMW has going on it's like a whole new level
of design and we're looking at incredibly reliable bikes paired with
beautiful function and form.
What I really love about motorcycle design is that you get to design every
bit and piece of the bike but that's also the challenging bit because you got
to understand every piece and bit of the motorcycle. When you're working on the
motor you're going to know what goes on inside of it otherwise you can't really
design it in an honest way and that's the quality I see within my team.
What I think is interesting with this motorcycle somehow it also reflects the
spirit in the design studio because a lot of people out there they think that
we're like like these super clean cut guys running around in white lab coats
and you know working on computers that creates motorcycles in a magical kind of
way. On one hand it might be true right we're a very high-tech company on the
other hand we're really a bunch of garage rats and guys are welding and grinding
and getting dirty and this combination I think is just the coolest thing right.
When people think about BMW they usually think about precision and function
which is also correct I mean we're always at the cutting edge pushing
innovation that's our thing but this bike is a bit different this bike is
about heart and soul and garage spirit this bike is all about emotion I wasn't
expecting what I really like about this bike is that mix between old classic
style and new technology like the bodywork is very simple very clean it
really captures that pureness of our ideas and then we have all the
technology where everything is just littered with the best parts you can
get that really speaks high performance. When BMW came to us and said they wanted
to do the R90S Homage bike it was a really big project just in general but
we really attacked it from both ends so it was not only aesthetically correct but
then the fully functional aspect of it as well all of us had the same vision
which is pretty I think unique when you when you pull people from such different
parts of the world together but I think that it really shows in their result.
I think for me a motorcycle is easily the purest execution and idea it's all
exposed you know the engines all out there every mechanical piece is exposed
to the world and you really can't hide bad design with a motorcycle it's all
right there I really get a lot of satisfaction out of making that work.
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