Anyone who knows us knows we’re not opposed to a horizontally opposed engine around here. We’ve had many a BMW roundel badge roll through our doors, primarily adorning the beloved R-series airheads as well as more recently on the flying brick of the K-series. Over the years of building these bikes we’ve simultaneously built a great relationship with BMW Australia, tagging along on their hugely popular GS Safari adventure ride and even throwing a leg over some Beemers abroad with BMW Japan. Suffice to say, we’ve created some fond memories atop these boxers, so when we got the call up to modify a brand new BMW R1300GS we jumped at the chance of dipping into that rich lineage again.

Ok, with that initial slathering of praise out of the way, we'll take a step back and admit that there was a time that we didn’t really get the GS. It’s easy to look at the GS and see a huge, heavy lump of bike that would be a super comfortable tourer but not overly practical off-road. A bike that’s nicknamed ‘The Rhino’ doesn’t exactly scream mountain taming capability to the uninitiated. But of course, we’re now members of the not-so-exclusive club of riders proven wrong by the BMW GS. There’s a reason why these bikes are so often top of the list when it comes to off-road tourers, a realisation we made very quickly upon finally actually riding one (who could’ve guessed?!). Controls, ergonomics, centre of gravity - everything is where it needs to be. The exceptional balance and available torque makes slow speed manoeuvring a breeze, performance isn’t skewed or sacrificed between dirt or tarmac riding, and there are even heated grips & seats to keep cowards such as ourselves alive through our famously frigid Queensland winters.

BMW essentially haven’t stopped evolving the GS series since its 1980 inception, that’s 45 years of development toward the goal of delivering the longest riding, most reliable and highly refined adventure rig on the market. With this in mind, our goal for this project wasn’t to fire up the grinders and show how much we could cut and modify things, we’ve completed plenty of other builds that showcase that. Instead we took the approach of designing and building a bike that resembles a factory special, albeit with an Ellaspede twist. So, we started with a BMW R1300GS Triple Black and decided to pay homage to the iconic race preparation specialist HPN-Motorradtechnik, by way of a white, red and BMW Tricolour livery.

Yeah, we know, we’re not the first to kneel at the alter of the 1986 Rally Legend - many have pulled water from that well before us and there’s no doubt more will come after, but we still love to see new interpretations so here’s ours! Along with the livery update we also decided to reduce some of visual mass from the rear by fabricating a custom tail tidy section. One design challenge we encountered here was keeping the radar sensor oriented correctly and free of faraday caging, but we took the opportunity to add a pop of yellow acrylic and some Ellaspede branding. We got a nostalgic kick from the yellow, surely some kind of Lego influence, and decided to bookend the bike in it by matching the hand guards and tinting the windscreen in turn.

With an open workshop and a lot of mates who like bikes, it can be hard to keep a project under wraps here at Ellaspede. A particular few of these mates got wind of it and thought it would pair perfectly with a product development project they had on the go and asked if they could utilise it for some testing. We were of course happy to oblige, as much to satiate our curiosity about what they were designing as to help a friend in need. At the time of releasing this build the product in question is still under wraps and safely guarded by non-disclosure agreements - but we can at least reveal that we fabricated some pannier style mounts to affix them to the bike. One side houses the mystery product, whilst the other enables another homage to the iconic ’86 Dakar Rally R80GS via a race number board. We do have an extensive video highlighting the heroics of the mystery product, which we’re excited to release once the product itself is buttoned up and ready to add-to-cart - so stay tuned to our feeds for that!

Something we rarely do in these write-ups is talk about the stock factory features. That’s because most of the time we’re ripping them out and replacing them with something of our own. Since this was a bit of a fresh approach for us, this is probably a great time to mention some of the features we really like about the GS. First up, the TFT screen and control wheel. It’s instinctively one of the first things you’ll fiddle with when you grab the bars and BMW got this one right. The user interface controlled via the scroll wheel is intuitive and utilises a wide-shallow design format, allowing adjustments while riding with no loss of focus on the road. Our front of camera talent of choice, Joel, who you see ripping on the GS in our videos had never ridden a GS nor used the BMW interface, but after a brief-ish jaunt out to our filming location he was on top of the whole system - dialling in his suspension and ride dynamics, perusing diagnostics and digging out whatever he wanted to know about the bike before we ever got a chance to run him through how to use it.

The R1300GS comes equipped from the factory with the Metzeler Karoo 4 rubber, a tyre that Leo & Andy became infatuated with during the 2023 GS Safari. If you’re chasing an adventure tyre, look no further - these things are beauties on whatever surface you throw at them. The boys did manage to find one gripe with the mighty GS during that trip though, and we’re disappointed to share that the elusive ‘2.5’ heated grip setting between 2 & 3, aka. ‘The Goldilocks Handful’, has not been added despite copious personal email requests to BMW HQ in Berlin. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll see this truly innovative upgrade brought to market, but for now the elusive unicorn bike remains at large. But if the greatest criticism we can level at the R1300GS is concerning the comfort of Leo & Andy’s delicate office hands, I guess BMW are pretty close to the mark with this one.

Albums we listened to during the build of this bike:

Build Pricing & Enquiries:

For build and pricing details or to discuss commissioning a custom motorcycle build of your own please email contact@ellaspede.com