Boutique motorcycle company Langen has unveiled a stablemate to its delectable, super-lightweight 2-Stroke. The 2025 Lightspeed rocks a hard-punching 1190cc V-twin, and hits the one horsepower per kilogram mark – at least, til you sit on it.
The four-year-old Manchester company is named for its founder Christofer "Langen" Ratcliffe, who set out on his own after a stint as Chief Design Engineer at CCM. That connection probably explained the similarities between Langen's first bike and the tiny CCM Spitfire, but the Lightspeed strikes out in a different direction.
It's still got a modern retro sort of feel to it, and keeps the steel trellis frame that served as the visual highlight of the 2-Stroke. But where the frame is curvy and ornamental on the featherweight 2-Stroke, it looks rigid, straight and structural on the Lightspeed. It's a flat-out bigger, chestier and more substantial bike, although the (presumably dry) weight is kept pretty reasonable at 185 kg (408 lb).
There's barely any bodywork here, but where there is, it's carbon. Suspension is Swedish, in black, and the brakes are by Hel. The paintwork, handlebars, wheels and "other touches" will be bespoke to each buyer.
At the heart of it all is a 72-degree Rotax V-twin, displacing 1,190 cc and beefing out a healthy 185 horsepower (138 kW) at 10,600 rpm, and 138 Nm (102 lb-ft) at 8200 rpm. You may recognize this liquid-cooled donk from the bike it was originally designed for: Erik Buell's EBR 1190RX superbike.
That may well give the Lightspeed a similar character to the EBR, which I recall as feeling caged and unhappy in city traffic, with a heavy clutch and a desperate need to find a bit of open road and let its ya-yas out. But it's certainly got all the power you could ask for in a naked roadster, and maybe it'll still make that cool turbine-style whine that the EBR makes on downshifts.
Langen is building 185 of them for the UK, starting in 2025, and 370 more for the rest of the world starting in 2026/2027. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, at a grimace-inducing starting price of UK£37,000 (US$45,915) plus taxes. We have no doubt it'll turn heads down at the local biker meet, but 46 grand worth of heads? That had better be a lot of heads.
Source: Langen Motorcycles
