Bayonne, France-based DAB Motors has embraced the idea of motorcycles as fashion items and has produced a quirky, game-console-inspired translucent electric motorcycle.
There is an old criticism of motorcycles that they are just "butt jewelry" – fashion items for the sort of people who wear mullets without irony.
Motorcycle marketing teams will occasionally indulge in nods to fashion (consider how often Triumph's Bonneville shows up in photo shoots, for example), but it's still rare to see a marque go 'all in,' in the way that DAB Motors has.
A subsidiary of Peugeot, DAB describes itself as "an electric motorcycle manufacturer on a quest for singularity." I'm not sure I understand what that means, but perhaps that's the point; obliqueness is part of DAB's vibe. It has embraced the "motorcycles as art" way of thinking and is aggressively pitching itself to fashionistas.
Indeed, a recent headline in The Times (of London) declared that DAB's forthcoming 1α Transparent Edition is "the fashion set's favorite new motorbike." That article appeared in The Times' luxury section, by the way, not motoring. DAB is taking a different approach to selling two-wheeled vehicles – one that can be seen in its recent collaboration with London-based fashion designer David Koma.
That collab has produced six custom 1α bikes, each costing €19,900, and looking – to my uncouth eye, at least – almost exactly like standard 1α models (priced at €14,900) but with an ill-fitting and slightly fuzzy seat cover.
That's fashion, I guess. As the Harley-Davidson guys are fond of saying: "If you don't understand, you'll never understand."
More comprehensible to me is the one-off translucent custom 1α that DAB has produced, which, delightfully, makes the bike look like a games console.
"Drawing inspiration from translucent colored consoles, the entire body of this DAB 1α is made with fully translucent plastics, showcasing the inner mechanics," explains DAB. "Controls, design features and color palette provide a gamified aesthetic and experience, while a customized vintage game cartridge start key provides a truly unique and distinctive feature for gaming enthusiasts."
For what it's worth, 1α is pronounced "one alpha." That's not a Latin script letter "a," but a Greek "α" (alpha) because there's nothing more fashionable than forcing journalists to use special characters.
You can learn more about the particulars of the 1α by reading the story my colleague published in April, back when sales of the 1α seemed imminent. Roughly six months later, as best I can tell, the company is still just taking pre-orders.
Source: DAB Motors
