No-one said a word. We were too stunned to speak. Pat, a fellow Grade 12 student, swung wide the doors to his Mercury Marquis in the student parking lot to show off his latest modification. Inspired by the overhead controls in airplane cockpits, Pat fashioned a homemade switch panel that he affixed to the inside of the roof, overtop the windshield-mounted rearview mirror. The idea was suspect, the execution horrifying. Pat had fiberglassed overtop a plywood base, but he’d applied the ’glass after the base had been affixed to the roof, and he’d used too much resin, which dripped down and then solidified, like stalactites, giving the interior of the Mercury an even more cave-like atmosphere. I hadn’t thought of Pat and his Mercury in decades. Not until I saw the customized BMW R18 of California-based Shinya Kimura.
From bobbers in the ’50s to the advent of the chopper scene in the ’60s, the custom scene was dominated by stripped, slammed, and chopped Harley-Davidsons. But then things got weird. Slick builders like (former professional bowler) Arlen Ness took the raw-edged, counterculture chopper and cleaned-it-up, chromed-it-up, and fattened-it-up with chubby tires. Ness’s apex of excess was reached with the bike he concocted to look like a 1957 Chevrolet car. And just when it seemed the scene couldn’t possibly become more divorced from its working-class, mildly antisocial roots, along came a television sitcom that featured motorcycles as pawns in a dysfunctional family drama. Eventually, mercifully, Orange County Choppers imploded, and dragged the entire scene down the drain with them. It was in this vacuum that the new custom scene took root.
The new scene was scrappier and far less pretentious than the old one. Reflecting the more austere world after the crash of ’08, the new custom scene welcomed all brands. From old Triumphs and air-cooled BMW boxers to any-and-all Moto Guzzis to toss-away oddities like the transverse V-twin Honda CX500/650. And even the custom Harley gained a new life from, most notably, inventive Japanese builders who weren’t hamstrung by the domineering influence of American customizers. Initially, I followed the new custom movement with interest. But, over time, my old qualms regarding the custom motorcycle resurfaced.
Years ago, in a Nashville guitar shop, the salesman suggested my girlfriend, a musician, try a guitar from a local luthier. It was handmade, by a man, we learned, who made guitars one at-a-time. It was as custom as a Ness chopper. My girlfriend strummed a G-chord and our eyes met. I’d never heard a guitar sound so rich, deep, and clear. And the finish was so lustrous it looked like it could swallow your arm up to the elbow. The guitar was an aesthetic and aural triumph. For $18,000, it was nothing less than you’d expect.
The custom motorcycle, however, takes your money and right along with it much of a motorcycle’s function. Suspension travel is often sacrificed because low bikes look cooler than high bikes. (It’s true. Next time you strap you bike to a trailer step back and take a look. It looks better.) Fenders go missing. Air-filters, too, are a liability, as open bellmouths look the bomb. And, at some point in the evolution of the new custom, it was determined OEM seats and side covers were an aesthetic blight. In workshops all over the world, a gaggle of angle grinders nipped off offending subframes and exposed the new custom movement’s most glaring shortcoming: custom builders, more often than not, do not have the chops of motorcycle designers.
摩托车设计是复杂的。虽然它很简单to think a component (a tail section, say) made by an OEM designer who’s had to consider budget, weather-protection, and compliance with global vehicle regulations can be improved upon, the new custom movement proved otherwise. Gone were the complex curves and studied proportions from practiced, professional designers. In its place, custom builders fabricated rudimentary, unsophisticated forms. Flat subframes supported thinly-padded seats as dimensionless as an ironing board. And in removing side covers—the ability to look “through” a bike is one of the movement’s mantras—it creates a ubiquitous look that extends across brands. A Honda looks like a Kawasaki looks like a Moto Guzzi looks like a BMW. The custom scene is mired in a paradox—the movement that reveres the individual fabricator is mired in a sea of sameness.
And then we have Kimura’s BMW R18. By keeping the running gear stock, Kimura (commissioned by BMW itself) sidesteps the pitfalls of many builders in that it’s a functioning, usable bike. It’s also a harbinger of the movement’s collapse.
Elvis went from an icon of swaggering sexuality to Vegas kitsch in two decades. Kick-out-the-floodlights punk rockers now play casinos. Everything new grows old. And while Kimura, in interviews, appears a modest, likeable man, his R18, just like Arlen Ness’s ’57 Chevy inspired motorcycle, shows how bloated the new custom movement has become. Called “The Wal” (“whale” in German, explains Kimura, though we could have surmised) the hand-hammered bodywork disregards the forms of the motorcycle’s mechanical underpinnings and sits like a whale’s carcass overtop a modern framework.
Kimura is obsessed with bugs, as he explains in the film of the build, part of BMW’s video anthology series “A Bavarian Soulstory.” But put a bug under a microscope and evolution has bestowed upon it an enviable visage. Look beyond the bulging eyes to the sleek shells and insects become beautiful. Take a bug (any bug), hold it next to Kimura’s R18, and you begin to see his motorcycle for what it is: an ode to self-aggrandizement.
It is a machine conflicted. The BMW’s frame, engine castings, brakes, and handlebar switchgear—modern, refined, well-finished—reject Kimura’s roughshod bodywork. I can imagine Kimura’s supporters stating the new/old conflict is “creative tension.” But there isn’t any tension. The Wal is a flaccid as a fish. His R18 is two motorcycles. The one underneath, and the one on top. It’s no different than if you sheathed the exterior of your house in crushed velvet. A post-war bungalow is what it is irrespective of what you cloak it in.
Industrial design is a language of shape and form, and motorcycles are made in conjunction with product planners, marketers, and, most notably, engineers. Motorcycle design is not art. I’ve never met a motorcycle designer from an OEM comfortable with the word “art” to describe their work. BMW’s R18 is a successful machine in that it fulfills the brief created by BMW for a large-displacement cruiser that appeals to enough purchasers to make it a fiscal success. Kimura claims no such inclusion. “I built the R18 entirely for myself,” said Kimura. It’s a shame he didn’t keep ittohimself.
