A few years ago, Sean from Original Café Racer Co in London was lucky enough to ride across Africa with Charley Boorman on a Compass Expedition. The experience inspired a crazy idea; turning a BMW R1200GS into a street racer. ?Having successfully designed and customised café racers in the past, I wanted to set myself the ultimate challenge; build four, spectacular, limited edition bikes to commemorate the expedition of a lifetime from Cape Town to Victoria Falls, covering South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe,? says Sean.

It?s hard to believe that this custom-built bike started life as one of the last air-cooled BMW R1200GS in the country. The holy grail was to produce a street racer with all the capabilities of a GS. This resulted in lots of modifications including; chopping the rear end, replacing the fuel tank, discarding the airbox, exhaust and massive oil cooler.
At first glance, you might have thought the bike was a R nineT, but the only thing this bike shares with the R nineT model is the fuel tank. It remains very capable off-road as the original BMW engine mapping on the GS model has been kept including the electronic adaptive suspension. This transformation resulted in a substantial loss of weight close to 45KG creating a lighter weight, high-performance bike maximising its engine power output to full capacity with K&N air and oil filters. The original large oil cooler has been replaced with a smaller but more efficient BMW unit and relocated from ...