The Custom-Made BMW R9T

BY SARANG SHETH 

It’s 2030, we’ve survived the pandemic, but at a cost. Society has collapsed, and we’ve gone from fighting over toilet paper to fighting over more valuable resources like food and water (sort of like Mad Max: Fury Road, but without any copyright infringements).

Now imagine a fierce warrior speeding through modern-day ghost-town Los Angeles. He’s on an equally fierce-looking bike that’s some sort of salt-flats racer/Tron-bike hybrid. You look a little closer and you see the familiar white-blue circular logo with the letters BMW around it.

Now snap out of that apocalyptic dreamland I built and marvel the bike I’m talking about. Meet the BMW R9T, a one-off customized version of BMW’s new R18 cruiser, by the guys at Moscow-based Zillers Garage. It retains the R18’s internal build but comes with a redesigned outer body, made entirely from fabricated aluminum parts.

The bike comes with a relatively closed design that integrates all its elements, from the headlight, all the way till the tail-light into a single unified mass with a naked metal finish that gives it its raw, post-apocalyptic appeal.

It comes with a menacing HID lamp at the front, and a taillight mounted on a sliding rear that you can open to access the bike’s electricals. The bike’s dashboard gets integrated right into its fuel-tank, into displays that lie recessed into the bodywork in a way that’s clearly visible to the rider.

Move a little lower and you’ve got the original R18’s incredibly wide boxer engine that literally protrudes right out of the modified bike’s body-work. I’ll admit the engine’s width makes me worried about burning my shins, but it seems like something BMW would have already thought of.

The bodywork by Zillers Garage gives volume to the bike, making the boxer engines look almost like the bike grew a pair of biceps. The R9T also doesn’t provide much in terms of ground clearance, but this bike’s more of a collector’s showpiece in my opinion, and an incredibly sexy one at that! Besides, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles seems a little far off anyway.

Designers: Zillers Garage, Mikhail Smolyanov & John Reed