All this talk of new motorcycles at EICMA with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and displays as big as tablets and taglines like "future of mobility," and none of those bikes stand a chance against the three motorcycles we’ve dug out for you. The script is simple: put together something ridiculously crazy, put two wheels at either end, and ensure the thing runs.
We're talking about machines that sound as though they were dreamed up during a particularly enthusiastic late-night conversation at a bar. Our short list shapes up with a 200-hp power cruiser wearing a Lotus badge, a five-cylinder Puch moped, and an eight-cylinder, 1,000cc two-stroke motorcycle.
Let’s get cracking!
Lotus C-01: A 200-hp superbike dressed like a power cruiser
The name Lotus usually evokes lightweight sports cars, racing pedigree, and Colin Chapman's famed obsession with adding lightness. Motorcycles, however, aren't exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the British marque's name.
But that didn't stop the Lotus C-01 from becoming one of the most outrageous two-wheeled projects to wear its badge. Unveiled in 2014, the C-01 looked less like a conventional superbike and more like a futuristic custom cruiser that had somehow escaped from a science-fiction film.
It boasted a long, low stance, sculpted bodywork, chunky tires and exposed mechanical details that gave it an unmistakable presence if you were lucky enough to spot it in real life. But the styling was only half the story.
Underneath that exquisite exterior sat a 1195cc, 75-degree V-twin engine producing approximately 200 hp. That's some serious power even by modern superbike standards, let alone for something with proportions that suggest it should be cruising down a boulevard as opposed to chasing lap times.
The engine was paired with a six-speed jaw-type transmission and a hydraulic anti-hopping clutch. Lotus Motorcycles' published specifications also list a steel, titanium and carbon-fiber chassis, twin front brake discs measuring 320 mm and a dry weight of approximately 399 lb (181 kg) – which is a serious achievement for a bike producing this much power.
That results in a power-to-weight ratio of 0.5 hp/lb.
There's an important distinction to make here, though. The C-01 wasn't developed or manufactured by Group Lotus, the company behind the cars. It was the result of a collaboration led by motorsport outfit Kodewa, under Dr. Colin Kolles, with engineering support from the Holzer Group and design work by Daniel Simon. Lotus itself explicitly makes this distinction on its motorcycle website. So while the badge is genuine, this isn't quite the same thing as Lotus Cars deciding to build a motorcycle.
Still, that doesn't make the C-01 any less fascinating. It remains a spectacular example of what happens when automotive design ambition meets motorcycle engineering, even if its styling won't appeal to everyone. And with 200 hp on tap, it's certainly not a machine you'd want to mistake for a leisurely weekend cruiser.
Uwe Oltmann's five-cylinder Puch: Because one engine wasn't enough
If the Lotus C-01 sounds excessive, wait until you hear about a humble moped that has been given five engines. Not five cylinders in a purpose-built engine, mind you. But five separate two-stroke motors connected together to create one gloriously unnecessary machine.
Built by German toolmaker and moped enthusiast Uwe Oltmanns, this creation started life as a 1976 Puch Maxi S. The original machine had a modest 48.8cc two-stroke engine and a one-speed transmission. It was the sort of moped designed to get someone from A to B without much fuss. Oltmanns apparently had rather different plans.
He retained the Puch's main frame but extensively reworked the rest of the machine, adding four more engines to the original setup. Each was bored out to 70cc, bringing the combined displacement to around 350cc. That's a rather substantial jump for something that began life as a 49cc moped.
The engines are linked through a complicated arrangement of shafts and belt drives, with the bottom three connected by a central shaft and the remaining two brought into the equation through separate belt drives. But, as you can imagine, getting all five engines running is an exercise in patience, mechanical ingenuity and probably a fair amount of swearing.
Oltmanns has to start the bike by spinning the rear wheel to fire up the first engine. Once it's warmed up, the remaining motors are brought into action one after another by releasing their fly clutches with a wrench. So no, you can't simply press a starter button and expect five little two-strokes to burst into life together.
The rest of the build is equally bonkers. The Puch wears race-spec WP suspension forks sourced from a 1993 Aprilia RS 125 R Grand Prix racer, along with a single-sided swingarm from the same machine. There's also a PVM magnesium rear wheel, custom-machined components, and a rather unusual headlight that reportedly came about after Oltmanns had a 5am flash of inspiration following a party, according to BikeEXIF.
The real question is, does it actually work? Surprisingly, yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean you'd want to ride it. With all five engines running, the machine reportedly registers a staggering 127.5 decibels. The heat and noise make it practically unrideable, and shutting it down involves pulling all five spark plugs. That's right: even turning the thing off is a five-step operation.
If you're wondering whether Oltmanns has finally exhausted his appetite for ridiculous moped engineering, apparently not. The guy’s also built a supercharged 70cc Puch and has been working on a V10 version. At this point, we're beginning to suspect that the original Puch Maxi was simply a starting point.
Veloce Aperion: An eight-cylinder, 1,000cc two-stroke
The third on our list is the Veloce Aperion. Imagine taking a two-stroke engine, multiplying its cylinder count to eight, arranging those cylinders in an X configuration, and extracting a claimed 280 hp from a litre of displacement. That, in a nutshell, is what British outfit Veloce Motorcycles has created.
The Aperion's headline feature is that very 1,000cc X8 two-stroke engine, producing the peak 280 hp of output at 12,000 rpm, with the complete powertrain weighing just 231 lb (105 kg). The X configuration makes this a very different proposition from the conventional inline-four or V-twin layouts most of us are familiar with.
Two-strokes are already something of a rarity in modern road-going motorcycles, largely because emissions regulations and refinement requirements have pushed most manufacturers toward four-stroke engines. So building an eight-cylinder version, complete with the associated challenges of packaging, cooling and exhaust tuning, is quite the undertaking.
Veloce has also developed a laser-sintered, all-alloy resonance exhaust system to accommodate the engine. That's a particularly important part of the equation because two-stroke engines rely heavily on carefully tuned exhaust systems to manage gas flow and extract performance. Fitting eight cylinders into a motorcycle is one thing; finding somewhere to put all their exhaust hardware is quite another.
Veloce combines the chassis, engine, and transmission into a single structural unit, which it says helps deliver exceptional stiffness. The motorcycle also gets an in-house-developed rear suspension system using a pullrod-actuated coil-over damper mounted underneath the chassis. Power is sent through a six-speed wide-ratio gearbox, with the hydraulic clutch integrated into the gearbox's mainshaft.
The most remarkable part is that Veloce isn't presenting the Aperion as a mere theoretical engineering exercise. The company says commissions are available for 2027, with production limited to just 24 units. It also claims the motorcycles will comply with the UK's MSVA road-approval requirements.
Of course, that alone doesn't make it a conventional production motorcycle. But it does suggest that Veloce intends to build actual customer machines rather than simply leave the project as an eye-catching prototype.
There's something wonderfully entertaining about all these machines. None of them are particularly concerned with making life easier for the average rider. They're expensive (perhaps unattainable as well), impractical, mechanically complicated or, in the Puch's case, almost impossible to ride comfortably.
But they demonstrate something that sometimes gets lost in today's increasingly calculated motorcycle industry: there are still people willing to build machines simply because the idea is too ridiculous to ignore.
Sources: Lotus Motorcycles, Veloce Motorcycles, BikeEXIF
