This year’s Top Marques event in Monaco is the location where BMW has unveiled a new custom chopper motorcycle. Built as a one-off project in partnership with Radikal Chopper, the R 18 Magnifica is an almost completely hand-built blend of old and new themes. Its designer, Andrea Radaelli, was on hand to break down his vision for this stunning bike.
Part of the allure of the Top Marques Monaco event is all of the extreme luxury goods on hand to take in. The R 18 Magnifica is an excellent example of that as it blends mahogany wood, brass, and aluminum, along with a custom frame and billet aluminum wheels.
Radaelli wanted to emulate the classic motorcycles of BMW’s past. And he looked way back to bikes from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s to inform this final design. He says that bikes from the era when BMW launched the classic R 37 “have an incredible charm that even today many modern motorbikes cannot replicate.”
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One of the few surfaces not crafted by hand is the billet aluminum wheels but even they give off the appearance of being hand-carved. The brake discs and calipers are totally custom components created specifically for this build as well.
Despite the stunning old-school cool looks, the running gear is almost completely stock R 18 which means it runs as a new bike should. During the build process, the motorbike lost around 220 pounds (100 kg). That’s almost one-third of the total weight of the original bike. This one tips the scales at just over 551 pounds (250 kg).
This isn’t the first time the trio of Radaelli, Radikal Chopper, and BMW Motorrad have come together. In 2020, they combined to build a similarly retro-modern chopper motorcycle called the Ad Maiora. That bike won the Motor Bike Expo’s MBE award as the best custom motorcycle at the show. We get the feeling that the Magnifica won’t have too much trouble repeating that success.
