Despite its increasing popularity, the 1980s K-series BMW remains a difficult bike to customize. There’s hardly an inch of it that isn’t blocky, angular, or just plain awkward?so it takes a sharp eye and deft hand to massage it into a slick and cohesive café racer. Enter Chris Scholtka.
Based in Cottbus, Germany, Chris splits his time between his job as a firefighter and his after-hours custom bike-building endeavor, Motocrew. He cracked the code for building razor-sharp BMW K-series café racers a while ago, and he’s produced a handful of them since. But his latest build?a 1984 BMW K100 café racer?hits a little differently.

The project was commissioned by a friend who had found a 1984 BMW K100 that was in great shape and wanted it customized. He naturally called Chris first?but Chris was hesitant to take the job. ?My first thought that it wasn’t a good idea,? he explains, ?because I don’t want to build the same shit again and again. But this time my customer had a big enough budget to build something unique. So I said yes, and, after a couple of hours brainstorming with him, we settled on a basic setup.?

?Since everyone has been customizing these bikes, this one had to be a special, one-of-a-kind BMW K100. It had to be low and loud, and it had to have hints of the old Formula One John Player Special livery. It’s classy and it never gets old.?
Before he got to tweaking the BMW K100’s bodywork, Chris concocted an elaborate pl...