1980 BMW R80 - Tarmac Custom Motorcycles

I’m sure many of us know the situation. A complete bike in pieces, a vision of the end product in our head, and trying to work out how wrong you will be about the budget required for the build. Tarmac Custom Motorcycles encountered the first two of these ideas, and the latter ended up being no issue, as whatever they spent on it was worth it. Javi Pacheco and Jano Valiente, a classic bike enthusiast  and a seasoned mechanic respectively, joined forces in late 2011. Since then they have completed 12 bikes, with a handful more to finish. Their latest offering comes in the form of a 1980 BMW R80 flat tracker, which showcases the Tarmac workshop’s talents beautifully. 

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Rudy Banny’s '86 BMW R80RS - “Brafé Racer”

Rudy Banny's college career began with Petroleum Engineering. That's the art of getting crude oil out of the ground and in to pipes. But that was only for about ½ a semester, after which he found out that several calculus classes were involved, and promptly dropped out. Amen to that. Afterwards, you could say he did complete u-turn and got into a little Petroleum Deconstruction. “I've always been a huge fan of Brat Style. After landing a job in advertising, I fell in love with BMW's when a buddy of mine let me ride his 1965 r60/2 and 1972 r75/5 for a week when I was shooting in LA. That was it. I fell in love with airheads. I wanted one, but just couldn't get into the purist mentality that seems so prevalent with Bimmer owners. I’m more of a custom guy. So, I started looking for the cleanest, most pristine airhead I could find, so I could deconstruct it.”

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1986 BMW R80RT - 'Bopper'

Australia has a tendency to claim things and people that are actually originally from our closest neighbours, New Zealand. For example, Russell Crowe and Keith Urban, who most people think are Australian are in fact both born in New Zealand. So when Michael Dobson sent us this radical R80RT build, part of the conditions were that we made sure our readers knew the bike was built in Australia New Zealand. Of course we reluctantly agreed.

Michael has one impressive resume, which includes being a motorcycle mechanic for 34 years, specialising in servicing and primarily building BMW police bikes for over 20 of those years. That in itself is impressive, but the list also includes a stint as a successful race mechanic in BEARS and production racing, a workshop foreman at Motorad and a "semi famous Ural pilot". So if there was one guy who we would choose to build us a custom Beemer, Michael is the perfect candidate.  

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Kevils Speed Shop's BMW R100 RS - "Le Mans"

If you are going to use a race car as inspiration for your BMW scrambler project, there is not a better, more famous or outrageously cool race car than the 1970 Gulf Porsche 917 featured in Steve McQueen's movie 'Le Mans". The classic Gulf powder blue with marigold orange trim is one of the most iconic racing liveries in history. Kevin Hill from Kevils Speed Shop in Devon, England, decided to use these iconic colors and Porsche 917 as motivation for this sensational street scrambler he has named "Le Mans". Kevin has a serious soft-spot for old BMW boxers and has built too many to count over the years. He started working in the motor industry straight from school in the early eighties and has had a varied career since, including industrial model making. “I suppose that's how I got a keen eye for detail and design,” he says. It wasn't until 2009 that he decided to make his passion of building custom motorcycles his full time job – and we're sure glad he did.

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Scott Halbleib's BMW K100RT - “Number 3”

See that title up there? The one that starts with the name "Scott Halbleib"? There will two groups of people who read the line. The first, and probably by far the largest group, will be the readers who say, "who the hell is Scott Hal... Hal..." And then there will be those of you know who Scott is in the same way that you know that Dare Jennings is the guy behind Mambo and Deus Motorcycles, and that Ian Barry is the guy who owns Falcon Motorcycles. See, every bike that Scott has fashioned has been a jaw-to-the-floor, put me in a nice dress and call me Shirley world beater. In fact his first build, the Honda CB450 Bobber we featured in 2010 is one of my personal all-time favourites. Seriously. So when we heard from Doug Devine, owner and builder of the Yammie we posted last Wednesday that Scott had a new bike, we got our nice dresses on, picked our jaws up off the floor, and this is what we found...

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1984 BMW R65 Café Racer - “The Wasp”

“Barn find,” they call them. And the ‘they’ in this case would be an American-dominated coalition of nations that do actually have barns. Which kind of leaves those in the world who don't actually have barns as part of their local bucolic repertoire kinda in the lurch, don't you think? Well, not being a nation of people who take these kind of things lying down, us Aussies refused to put up with second best and trumped the barn with a marvelous creation we call the “shed.” See, whereas a barn can contain many things that aren't even remotely cool (take the humble yet smelly cow) the average Aussie shed will always have something cool it it. It's the law in some states. Forget animals, ploughs, and nesting birds - sheds are much more likely to be inhabited with things like engine parts, bar fridges, welders and greasy tools. Oh, and BMW motorbikes, if Tony Botrall's find is anything to go by... 

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BMW RS09 Cafe Racer

It's hard to believe that when the Sydney Opera House was unveiled back in 1973, a lot of the public called it the ugliest building they had seen. Not that it was truly ugly, but because they hadn't seen anything like it before. Now I'm not saying this BMW is the "Opera House" of the custom world. But I am saying you probably haven't seen a K100RS like it. Roel Scheffers from the Netherlands is the man behind this unique Beemer. Roel has built many bikes over the years, usually streetfighters and choppers, so this build was a little left of field for him. As a kid he used to ride on the back of his Dads K100, so this model holds some special memories to him - he wanted to build something different while still keeping the soul of the K100, and we reckon that's just what he's done.

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'92 R80 BMW Brat Tracker

Tasmania. Home of the Tasmanian Devil, some damn spectacular scenery, and the butt of some pretty unsubtle jokes from the rest of Australia. Americans have quips about “Southerners,” the English make the funnies about the ”Northerners,” and down here we mostly make jokes about Tasmanians. There's no need to go into detail - you probably get the jist already. But here's a bike that proves beyond any shadow of a doubt just what these islanders can do. See, they've taken a machine that was just about the best the mighty Deutschland could muster and then pushed it a whole lot further than most of us could ever manage. And when I say “they” I really mean the rather talented Nicholas Damen and his rather amazing Bee Emm brat.

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CRD #14 - BMW R75/5

The guys from Spanish shop Café Racer Dreams are truly making a name for themselves on a global scale. The garage was born out of a lack of vintage custom shops in Spain and founder Pedro Garcia hasn't looked back since opening its doors a few years ago. This is the first BMW to roll out of their small Madrid based garage and we love its stripped down simplicity. The bikes engine has been rebuilt with the expertise of Javier from Maxboxer who specialises in boxers. At this stage it's still a work in progress but we definitely like where they are going with this project. Pedro tells us it should be complete by the end of next month so we'll keep you posted. In the meantime there's a solid build thread worth checking out on the CRD blog.

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