BMW handed out a dozen of its new retro R nineT motorcycles to some of the world's top customizers and told them to go to town. The results have been mixed. Some are clean, most are staid, and one was downright obscene. And then there's this, the Highway Fighter from Cherry's Company.
As part of its Custom Project Japan, BMW tapped four builders to reinvent the R nine T, and Kaichiro Kurosu's is easily the pick of the litter.
The bodywork is hand-beaten aluminum to render what Kurosu calls its "near future" theme, with the fairings bleeding into the mesh enclosure below the tank and through the rear subframe and seat. The wheels are billet aluminum, sized 18 inches up front and 16 at the rear (up one and down one, respectively, from stock), and the front forks have been dropped by two inches and painted black to round out the stealth aesthetic.
Kurosu also fitted a new steering stem and tokes, along with an upgraded master cylinder and a sweet set of custom rear sets. It's all incredibly slick, particularly the custom exhaust and shorty pipe exiting right in front of the rear wheel.
BikeEXIF has a great interview with Kurosu that goes into detail about what he was trying to create with the Highway Fighter, and part of the design was to create something that would look just as good with an electric drivetrain as BMW's flat-twin.