Richard Mille has just unveiled a brand-new motorcycle with Brough Superior
Richard Mille made its name by producing high-value watches for the fast set, using cutting-edge technology and state-of-the-art materials. So it might seem incongruous that the brand famed for its “racing machines on the wrist” has partnered with a motorcycle marque commonly associated with the 1920s and contemporary owners such as famed army officer TE Lawrence “of Arabia” and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Nottingham engineer George Brough built his first motorcycle in 1919 and soon found fame with models such as the SS80 and SS100, which were personally tested by him and guaranteed to reach 80mph and 100mph respectively. And, like today’s Richard Mille watches, they didn’t come cheap: at £150 in 1923, an SS80 cost more than a small house. But the onset of WWII saw demand dry up for what was once described as “the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles” and Brough Superior went to the wall with little more than 3,000 machines built.
Fast-forward to the early 2000s and the decades had done nothing to diminish Brough’s reputation for excellence. In 2014, a 1929 SS100 Alpine Grand Sports achieved a record £315,100 at Bonhams in London. The following year, a trove of eight bikes – whimsically dubbed “The Broughs of Bodmin Moor” – oared to a combined price of over £750,000, despite needing total renovation after being left in a barn for more than 40 years. By then, Brough Superior’s status as the most collectable and coveted of all classic motorcycles had inspired British enthusiast and entrepreneur Mark Upham to establish an Austrian-based business supplying authentic parts to restorers around the world.
In 2008, he acquired the rights to the name, trademark and IP of the marque before spending the next year working on a trio of modern-day Brough Superiors that combined the look, sound and performance of the originals using 21st-century materials and construction techniques. He teamed up with a French-based engineering firm called Boxer Design whose owner, Thierry Henriette, took over the reborn Brough Superior in 2013 and has since expanded the lineup to include multiple models.These included a 2019 collaboration with Aston Martin which bore two limited-edition machines, the AMB001, a turbocharged road bike builtin 100 examples and costing more than €100,000, and the track-only AMB 100 Pro, an effort inspired by Aston’s Valkyrie hypercar.
Which makes it seem entirely logical that Brough Superior and Richard Mille, with their similarly uncompromising approach to engineering, should join forces to create the RMB01 – the latest, and possibly most spectacular design to emerge from the Brough factory in Toulouse. Described as “a true work of kinetic art”, the RMB01 is said to have been inspired by the American board-track racing bikes of the 1910s with their uncluttered aesthetic, slim fuel tanks, minimal seats and prominent engines.
Richard Mille himself worked with Henriette for 18 months in order to distil 12 potential designs into the finished product which, as with RM’s watches, bristles with lightweight materials derived from motorsport, such as titanium and carbon fibre. Elements of horology have also been incorporated, such as split wheel rims based on the gear train of a watch movement, and engine casings reminiscent of a tourbillon cage. Like a skeletonised Richard Mille watch, the RMB01’s engine is machined from a solid block of metal before being hollowed out as much as possible, the pursuit of lightness also manifesting in a carbon-fibre frame which uses th motor as a stressed member.
Just 150 examples of the bike will be available, in three colourways: Nocturnal Sapphire (midnight blue with blue detailing); Selene (matt grey with orange details) and Pearl of Speed (pearlescent white with red details). The order book is open now, with first deliveries expected at the end of the year.
€200,000; richardmille.com; brough-superior.com
