BMW: HANGING TEN ON THE TRENDS

BMW's concept homage to Wheels&Waves - the Path22

While in the south of France for the Wheels&Waves festival last week, BMW revealed its concept surf-moto, the 'Path22' - a reference to the forest service road Vincent Prat takes to his favorite surf spot north of Biarritz.  With paint by Ornamental Conifer and a custom surfboard by Mason Dyer, Path22 is a lovely homage to an event which has become the premier alt.moto festival in the world in just 4 years.  There's more on WheelsandWaves coming shortly in TheVintegent.com, but here's a teaser I wrote for CycleWorld.com.  I'll add the first two paragraphs: for the rest you'll have to click here and head to Cycle World.

BMW: HANGING TEN ON THE TRENDS

Paul d’Orleans 2015

Nicolai Sclater, otherwise known as 'Ornamental Conifer', painted the Path22 by hand in his signature avant style

The Southsiders MC, organizers of the Wheels&Waves festival in Biarritz, have been tearing up the Basque Pyrenees every June since2009.  There were 10 of us that year, and six years later the gang has grown to 10,000.  The first official edition of Wheels&Waves appeared in 2012, and was modest by comparison, but smelled of gunpowder. The artists, writers, builders, and publishers who participated knew something was up, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world felt the blast.

Robert Klanten of Gestalten (my publisher for 'The Ride' and 'The Chopper'), and Chris Hunter of BikeExif get the tour of the Path22's features from BMW head motorcycle designer Ola Stenegard 

BMW was the first brand to sign on with Wheels & Waves the following year, as  ‘Sonic’ Seb Lorentz (of Lucky Cat Garage) cajoled his bosses at BMW France to literally take a stand.  It was a shrewd move, and their presence has grown yearly, first bringing historic machines to display (a pair of Ernst Henne’s supercharged world speed record missiles), then revealing special collaborations, like the Blitz R9T custom, with the world’s first 3d-printed fuel tank...(Read the rest here) 

Details of the fun paint job - not the typical BMW effort!  But it's all about fun...a new direction for BMW