Lone Gunman
Lone Gunman
One mad Swede cranks out killer concept bikes-in his garage!
GARY INMAN
WHEN THE WORLD'S MOTORCYCLE manufacturers tightened their belts so firmly they gave themselves a hernia, one man in Sweden decided it was time he started building concept bikes because the biggest factories weren’t.
Marcus Carlsson walked away from his well-paid industrial design job and entered his one-car garage on the outskirts of Stockholm with a vision. His plan? Create the kind of bike that fired him up as a kid, sell it to a wealthy collector on the same wavelength, and then build a new concept, repeat ’til fade. But, he’s eager to point out, these aren’t custom bikes, they’re concept bikes.
“The essence of a concept bike is to have the concept transfer to a streetbike,” Carlsson explains. “A designer can take the more extreme elements and tone them down to introduce them to the market. I want to inspire engineers and designers who are making tomorrow’s production bikes.”
As dreams go, it’s a big one. But little
dreams aren’t dreams, just thoughts.
The concept Carlsson has just finished is called the Marcus Moto Design FI Tracker. “This bike has been fighting me since last May,” he explains. I look around the garage at the bottom of his garden and I can believe it. It looks like the tall Swede and the transmogrified Dueati 996 had each other by the throat a couple of times in here. Tools and scraps of bodywork are strewn about the workbench. Every surface is covered in dust from months of cutting and rubbing-down. Containers full of dried epoxy gloop pepper every surface. Carlsson has the kind of tan one only gets from spending virtually every minute indoors.
He would prefer to have tidied up his workspace before we arrived, but the deadline he set for himself to be • finished (and have a running bike for us to ride) became awfully tight when the modified Dueati electrics initially wouldn’t cooperate.
His FI Tracker is based on a 2002 Dueati 996. Carlsson had a “moodboard” of images that inspired the build: Niki Lauda’s 1975 Ferrari 312T FI car; 1980s Honda CR motocrosser; Ruben Xaus crossed-up and knee-down on a Dueati Hypermotard; an old Husqvarna two-stroke; 1960s Monza filler cap; MV Agusta “Disco Volante” petrol tank.
The result is controversial. When I was first e-mailed snaps of the FI Tracker, the design was so shocking I didn’t know what to make of it. Now, having seen it in the flesh, I like it. That’s how I, and most consumers, react to radical designs. Think about the KTM RC8, the 2008 Honda CBR1000RR... At first, they’re a
* .* shocking design few people seem / to like, then the look becomes
k ■ v j. more familiar. Car manufacturW ers often use radical concept I/ * designs to “break in” their j/ customers for radical new
I. - looks for their family of cars, a ^ ' technique used less often in the
more conservative motorcycle ¥¡/^‘ market. Ford did it with the
* y ,1* 1995 GT90 concept car that 's * j softened up the market for the
y~ * first production “New Edge”
“ÿ / Focus.
. Ola Stenegard is a friend of
«< ^ Carlsson’s, a fellow Swede and V also a team leader in BMW’s motorcycle design department. He has followed the Marcus Moto Design build process and was happy to chat informally about his friend’s projects. The principal designer on the HP2 Sport and S1000RR projects describes
Carlsson’s bikes as, “Kick ass cool as hell!” then settles a bit and continues.
“In my opinion, he is creating concept bikes. He looks further than just to build a bike for his own pleasing. A custom bike is generally about individualizing. For yourself. To make a statement about yourself. To stand out. To create the perfect bike for your very own taste and liking. Marcus seems to look for making a statement in the industry. He is asking, ‘What if Husky made a new superbike based on a V-Twin? What if Dueati would make a dirt/street/track/ supermoto-ish hybrid?’ He also does it to showcase what he can accomplish with his company, to direct attention to what he could offer an OEM.”
Like the designers working on future production models, Carlsson was involved in most aspects of the creation the bike. He stripped the damaged 996 to a bare rolling chassis, photographed a side view and started playing with the proportions of the bodywork using hand-drawn sketches and Photoshop. Once he was happy with the profile, he started making the buck for the carbonfiber bodywork. Unlike a design house making a concept bike to show to a client (or the boss of the company), Marcus had no need to make a clay mockup; he knew what he wanted and waded straight in.
He began the process by cutting a piece of MDF to give the side profile, the silhouette of the bike. On either side of the MDF, Carlsson built up layers of high-density insulation foam he could file, grind and shape. It’s not what design houses use, but it’s a tenth of the price. Once he was happy with the shape of the foam, he covered it in tape and started laying the carbon and resin on top. The tape was used to ensure the carbon-fiber didn’t bond to the foam. Once the carbon set hard, the foam inner was cut out and the lightweight, composite bodywork remained.
The FI Tracker is Carlsson’s second concept bike. The first, his Husqvarna VI000 (see sidebar), taught him to set all the bodywork fixing points before he started making it. That’s why the FI Tracker’s complete one-piece bodywork is held on with six fasteners.
Underneath the Dueati’s bodywork is a small steel petrol tank. A Monza filler cap, seen on the moodboard, pokes through a hole in the bodywork. The tank holds just 1.3 gallons, unacceptable for a streetbike, but something had to give to allow Carlsson to incorporate the Ferrari 312T-style intake.
The intake is the design aspect that divides opinion among the handful of people who had seen the bike before this magazine came out. The designer knows this and quotes the late influential custom bike builder, Johnny Chop: “If you don’t [piss] a few people off, then you didn’t do it right.” A vanilla concept bike is pointless. If there are no pieces that spark debate, then it hasn’t gone far enough along the road of introducing new ideas.
“It was never my intention to upset people, but I’m sure some people will be because I’ve been messing with one of the most beautiful bikes in the world,” says Carlsson, almost apologetically. He shouldn’t worry. There are still plenty of 996s out there, and this one had been damaged anyway.
With the gaping, rectangular intake becoming an immovable aspect of the styling, Carlsson had to work out how to minimize its effects on the rest of the bike. To do this, he designed his own triple-clamps, using the UniGraphics CAD program, with a bar clamp bolting to the front of the top clamp to allow the large scoop to be incorporated without towering above it all. He also designed the footrest hangers and had Thorbjörn Hjorter machine them for him.
The tail of the bike is inspired by the Yamaha motocrosser Carlsson had as a kid. The bodywork is a stew of F1, dirttrack and supermoto, and is so stunted it makes the wheelbase look like it’s been extended. It hasn’t. The one-piece bodywork was painted—in a 1970s Ferrari scheme—by Arnold’s Custom Art.
Detailing on this bike is crucial.
The Öhlins fork has the most recent stanchions with machined longitudinal grooves. Brakes are Brembo, wheels are 848/1098-spec Marchesinis. There are no fancy custom bolt-ons.
My favorite elements of Marcus Moto Design fabrication are the carbon arms that act as a mounting for the low-level projector light and supports for the radiator. They, like the intake, are something I haven’t seen before, true concept elements. Carlsson ran out of time, but he has a clever idea, and a half-finished bracket, for mounting the taillight from the shock’s piggyback reservoir.
But concepts serve little purpose if they don’t inspire. “Are there elements here that could be adopted by manufacturers?” I ask Stenegard.
“There’s tons!” he exclaims. “But mainly I find the directions very interesting. They both show new possible directions/segments for these brands. Carlsson is asking questions that Husky and Ducati might not have thought about.”
The most incredible thing about the FI Tracker for me is the fact it looks this radical, but runs and would not take much work to make it road legal. That’s not to say it’s practical transport (mainly due to that tiny petrol tank), but concept bikes rarely are.
Under the carbon-fiber seat (that may be changed for an upholstered version) lives a tiny LiPo battery powerful enough to start the high-compression V-Twin. The engine rumbles and rattles like any Ducati superbike. It is standard except for the Austin Racing end can.
Brakes and clutch were bled while we waited, and there wasn’t time to make them perfect. I wasn’t there to test ride the bike, but I wanted to be convinced it started. Virtually anyone with enough money and time on their hands could build some kind of radical show bike, but making it start, stop and go is something else altogether.
Carlsson didn’t just leave a secure job, he did it while his supportive wife Malin was still on maternity leave with baby twins. “I’m not normally this brave,” he says.
He left with a payoff that relieved some of the financial pressure, but most people would’ve paid off some of their mortgage. Carlsson is, therefore, keen to recoup the investment of six months of 40-50-hour weeks’ worth of work.
“I need to sell the FI Tracker and the Husqvarna so I can afford to build the next one,” Carlsson explains. “I have ideas for four or five bikes no one has ever seen. I hope the bike will be bought by someone who wants something unique, not someone who points at every carbon on the shelf and asks for that to be fitted to their bike. The dream scenario is for one of those collectors who shows bikes at the Pebble Beach Concours to buy it. You’ve got to aim high. I’ve spent so long on the bike I don’t want to think about it.”
The price Carlsson wants for the bike is significant, but no more than the likes of Jesse James’ West Coast Choppers was charging for cookie-cut chromedup V-Twins. Perhaps Red Bull will buy it, paint it in their colors and stand it in the corner of an FI hospitality unit.
There are plenty of wealthy people into bikes, but I don’t know if they want one man’s idea of a concept bike rather than another Vincent or MV Agusta. I hope they do. I want to see what Marcus Moto Design comes up with next. □
