“As fast and reliable as express trains and the greatest fun in the world to drive,” opined TE Lawrence (of Arabia) when speaking of his love for Brough Superior motorcycles back in the 1920s.
Who knows what he would have made of the latest two-wheeler to carry the Brough name: the high-tech AMB-001 that’s the result of a joint venture between the now French-owned manufacturer and another celebrated British automotive marque, Aston Martin.
Created with input from the teams at Aston Martin in the UK and Boxer Designer in Toulouse – where today’s Brough Superiors are built – the AMB-001 is a radical departure from Brough’s regular motorcycle range, which majors on combining old-school looks with modern engineering.
Indeed, there’s nothing at all that could be described as “old-school” on the AMB-001. Its carbon-fibre body serves as a load-bearing structure, the front suspension takes the form of a radical “double wishbone” and the fuel tank is topped by a distinctive aerodynamic fin.
Small wings at the front of the bike, meanwhile, serve to increase downforce at speed and the 1,000cc v-twin engine developed specifically for the AMB-001 is enhanced with a turbocharger that is predicted to boost output to as much as 180bhp – which should be sufficient to propel the 180-kilo machine to potentially well beyond 150mph.
Anyone who wants one will also need to be pretty quick – production will be capped at 100 bikes, each of which will be hand-built to order with first deliveries expected towards the end of 2020.
Other than the €108,000 price tag, perhaps the only downside to the futuristic AMB-001 is that it is being sold “for track use only,” meaning that most will probably end up in static collections instead of being used for the purpose for which they are clearly intended – which is to be ridden not as fast as express trains. But faster…
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