Written by Martin Hodgson
Over recent years we’ve featured countless BMW builds, crafted from models from the ’70s right through to the modern era. But there was a time in the German company’s history when there was every chance that not a single one of those machines would ever have seen the light of day. The big Bavarian nearly gave up on two wheels until they managed to lure engineer Hans-Günther von der Marwitz away from Porsche and dedicate a new factory in Berlin to Motorcycles. From near death, BMW bikes were back in business and the ?Slash 5? series would be their saviour. So tasked with hand crafting a classic tribute to Bayerische Motoren Werke’s machines of old, Rome’s Emporio Elaborazioni took the little brother BMW R50/5 and created a vintage masterpiece known simply as ?Solo?.
When it came to the donor bike for such a build, the little 50 made a lot more sense than its more popular bigger siblings the R60 and R75. Dopz and the Elaborazioni crew was taking much of their inspiration from the beautiful R23 and R32, and a motorcycle of more diminutive proportions was a better match. While the R50 is also a rarer commodity, with only a quarter as many made as the other Slash 5s while still being from that crucial era when BMW came booming back in Berlin. For the team it was also a chance to shift gears in another way as Dopz explains, ?After finishing new concepts like Cobra or Titano I had the chance to go back to bike roots beca...