If you work at a large motorcycle dealership and happen to have a few quid in your back pocket, then the chances are you have your dream motorcycle parked in your garage. For the guys at Switzerland’s VTR Customs, not only do they operate one of the best workshops on the planet, but they’re also based at a huge BMW dealership. So, their choice of personal bikes becomes even more intriguing, and across all three of the founders, there is one style of bike they have in common: Super Motos. Now armed with this information, their decision to turn the greatest adventure motorcycle of all time into a back street shredding scalpel makes a hell of a lot more sense. The all-new BMW R 1300 GS is a hell of a bike from the factory floor, but given the full VTR Customs conversion, the ‘R 1300 Super Moto’ adds miles of smiles to the Bavarian beast.
The guys’ choice of Super Motos being the common theme across their stable is even easier to understand, given they’re based in Switzerland. Following the Le Mans disaster of 1955, when a driver and 83 spectators were killed, the nation banned all forms of motorsport. Over the years, there have been efforts to overturn the ban, but one of the few forms of the sport you can participate in is Super Motard racing, and they make for wicked street-based machines too. Daniel, Stefano, and Marcel are also part of the broader VTR Motorrad family based at the large BMW dealership in Schmerikon, so their choice to almost exclusively use BMW for their customs is easily explained as well.
And despite the price tag on a new 1300 GS, not to mention that it is almost the exact opposite of the sort of bike you’d normally base a Super Moto on, the guys have already found great success with a number of builds based on the barnstorming BMW. The GS also has an incredibly loyal following, and it’s easy to see why: Dakar wins, the star of Ewan McGregor’s ‘Long Way’ escapades, arguably the greatest adventure bike ever built, and the machine which has kept BMW Motorrad in the black for the last four decades. So, with a brand new bike wheeled over from the dealership and into the VTR Customs shop, the boys could get busy stripping the big girl out of its enormous number of factory bolt-ons.
Starting with the non-Adventure model also helps massively, an instant saving of 32kg, which leaves the BMW just under the weight of a Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650, with more than three times the horsepower and torque. To drop that weight even more, and in the critical area of unsprung mass, the guys then fitted the bike up with some big-dollar Rotobox carbon fibre wheels, measuring 17 inches at both ends, down from 19 at the front, and wrapping them up with super sticky Continental tyres. A new ABS ring is required after the swap, and then it’s out for an MFK vehicle inspection costing around 250 euros, so the bike can be registered with carbon wheels.
All of this means the cost of fitting the new wheel and tyre package is US$6500, but so confident is Dani from VTR that this is worth doing, he’s offering test rides of this very bike at the shop to prove it. To continue putting the BMW on a diet, the factory rear has been removed, and VTR makes their own custom short tail, which also has the excellent effect of making the back end look a hell of a lot cleaner. The ugly axle-mounted factory rear fender is ditched, the mounts are practically bigger than the protective piece anyway, and the huge number plate bracket is swapped for a neat Rizoma item. The big GS screen is gone too, replaced by a much smaller smoked item for a mean look, and all of the big brackets and bolt-ons have their old holes blanked off to clean things up.
To finish the bodywork out and fit neatly over the 17-inch wheel, one of VTR’s own carbon fibre front fenders, initially intended for an S1000RR, gets bolted on with a custom mount. Now with a much cleaner canvas, the boys could let their sketched-up design of a Monster Moto come to life. The main colour is typical of the muted tones the guys so often use, which then allows the graphics to explode to life. The baby blue and bright yellow pop, and they’ve even used them in the detail work, like the blue on the BMW badging and the yellow carried over to the front headlight lens. Black is used to visually shrink the look of the bike on some components, and a crinkle finish is laid down over the valve covers.
The filler cap has been hit with more black, a fuel-resistant finish, and to help blend the entire bike into one seamless finish, the decision was made to heat wrap the pipes so they didn’t stand out like a big bull’s balls! But that’s not where the system finishes. to let the torquey boxer beast reveal its burble, an SC Project Black Edition muffler has been fitted, with a valve eliminator control unit added to fool the factory computer into thinking nothing’s changed. To punch through the gears, the rider’s feet sit on high-end Gilles Tooling pegs, with the shift and brake controls from the same company, while up on the bars, it’s BMW adjustable shorty levers for maximum attack.
Even the lighting package is designed to reduce the visual size and overall weight of the bike, and it doesn’t get any smaller than Kellermann Atto indicators up front and a tiny 3-in-1 setup for the rear. The glassless mirrors on the bar-ends come from Motogadget, and the full suite of insane electronics that come from the factory are still all available and ready to be deployed. The final touch is that mammoth custom seat, a true work of art, which comprises black perforated leather, two colours of Alcantara, with blue insets and stitching to match the overall colour scheme. A big adventure-style bike never looked so good, and whether you want to punch the 150hp to the nearest pub, or spend all day ascending the Alps, it’s hard to imagine a better bike to do it on.
[ VTR Customs ]