Page 100 - Paddock Life Issue 13 ADRENALINE

when it comes to painting and airbrushing – he made some suggestions on a colour scheme and we settled on red and grey with a gold glitter finish in the grey and gold pin-stripes, we also had a helmet painted up in the same colours and I had my studio create a logo blending our newly formed company 1.618 Machines and the BMW roundel.
While this was all going on Ade hit the internet and started sourcing parts – despite the eye- watering price we settled on new switchgear, headstock with built in digital display, bar end indicators and a unique tail hoop incorporating the rear indicators and tail light from a manufacturer called Moto-Gadget (www.motogadget.com) who make the most gorgeous custom accessories. It was like Christmas, as each week parts kept arriving, we dived into Styrofoam filled boxes and peeled away bubble wrap to reveal the next sexy piece of engineering to help bring our bike to life. We sourced a short-cut race exhaust, keyless electronic ignition, new Showa front forks, clip-on handlebars, race rearset footpegs, a hand-laced gold front wheel from a company called Sun-Rims in California which just sounded sexy let along how stunning the wheel itself was. The list went on and on but with the only problem being our budget was fast disappearing!
As part of our marketing effort we decided our goal must be to exhibit at the Bike Shed Show at Tobacco Dock, London in May, so we contacted Dutch and Vikki at The Bike Shed (http://thebikeshed.cc) to ensure we could get a slot to exhibit – (you have to be invited and meet the criteria) we explained our project and were invited to put the bike on display but it was fast approaching, so the pressure was on to bring all our work and parts together and get the bike rebuilt.
We counted down the days to the show, realising we also needed a few essentials away from the bike such as T-Shirts, business cards and somewhere to stay during the show - thanks to the ever-helpful Matthew Hawkins at Grange Hotels (www.grangehotels.com) for fixing us up at the Grange Tower Bridge.
The format for the show was two full days over the weekend and VIP/Press showing 5pm to 11pm on the Friday night – it was going to be a long few days.
We rolled into London on Friday morning to get set up and located our exhibit space in one of the main halls of the show. There were a great number of bikes being put into position and the show was easily twice as big as previous years. Once set up we walked round the other halls to check out the ‘competition’ there were certainly some stunning bikes but Ade and I felt very happy with what we had achieved with our ugly duckling as looked like it was going to fit right in with the others. There was a strong showing from the heritage and customising division of BMW Motorrad themselves, I was half waiting to be sued for bastardising their logo for my own purposes... But I am pleased to say when we met Christian Pingitzer the head of the division, he was nothing but complimentary about our project.
Over the course of the show we spoke to hundreds of people, it was packed, non-stop and delivered a really interesting cross section of visitors. I spoke with CEO’s of major corporations who happened to be passionate about bikes through to a team of architects who were sourcing ideas and bikes to put into construction projects and thought our bike would go well into a modern office reception in Germany.
The weekend went in a flash, Ade and I both ran out of business cards (300 each at the start) and had a stack of enquiry forms to follow up on. It seems that we were able to hold our own against some of the much bigger and established builders and also a number of people came back to us and said we had created one of the best bikes in the entire show.
With pride in our hearts and blisters on our feet we loaded the bike on Sunday night and headed for home, was it worth turning down FA Cup final tickets and Monaco F1 hospitality for? I think so, as we were clearly on to something.
As we were so pleased with the success of the show, Ade and I set about finding our next candidate bikes, my good friend Rick (Classic Car Dealer) was busy opening barns in Italy and came across a stunning Ducati 350 Desmo Sport – circa 1980 which is now safely tucked up in my garage and Ade spotted a gorgeous little Moto- Guzzi LeMans on AutoTrader and made the owner an offer he could not refuse. Both bikes can be tailored to customers exact requirements or left to our own design ideas; expect something along similar lines to the K75s in terms of finish, with the added advantage that these two donors are very pretty motorcycling Italian Icons in their own right - so now we are back at the party but this time with Monica Bellucci and Cosima Coppola with the only challenge being what they need to wear...
100