BOB'S BIKE

Fancy hidden gems? Here’s a turbo motorcycle like no other

- Alan Cathcart

When it was announced almost a year ago that prestige car manufacturer Aston Martin was linking with the French-based born-again Brough Superior factory to jointly develop a motorcycle, it seemed almost too good to be true. Mind you, putting a pair of Britain’s most historic marques on two and four wheels together seemed like a marketer’s mirage — great on paper, but how could it possibly work out in practice? Then we saw the AMB 001 adorned with Aston’s winged badge on its flanks unveiled at last November’s EICMA Milan Show — and suddenly it all made sense.

For, clothed in ultra-distinctive carbon-fibre bodywork designed by Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, Marek Reichman, the turbocharged direct-injection 997cc AMB 001 V-twin is a radically innovative motorcycle which has actually been undergoing development for the past decade. How so? Because that’s how long French designer, entrepreneur and Brough Superior Motorcycles CEO Thierry Henriette has been working on such a bike. The original prototype made its public debut at the 2011 Paris Show under the Boxer Superbob label, named after Thierry’s late father Robert who’d passed away three years earlier, after supporting his son’s decision at age 22 to drop out of medical school in favour of establishing a motorcycle dealership he named Boxer Bikes, after the then-new Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer he’d recently driven! Thierry’s Aston Martin days were yet to come.