If you’re a sneaker freak, you’ll know all about the Air Jordan XI Concord. Designed by Tinker Hatfield, it’s part of the legend that surrounds basketball player Michael Jordan—and it’s also the most popular model in the iconic Air Jordan range.
Michael Jordan is a keen motorcyclist, and even backed a race team a few years ago. So it feels appropriate that the XI Concord has become the catalyst for a very striking new custom from Impuls of Germany.
The idea came from the German sportswear label and retailer BSTN, and it’s a real light bulb moment.
“Duki from BSTN approached us to build a motorcycle for the release of the Jordan XI Concord,” says Impuls main man Philipp Wulk. “There would be a video shoot, and we would have just two months for the whole build.”
Philipp suggested the Ducati 916 as the donor bike. “It was groundbreaking in its own field, as Michael Jordan was in his. So we bought a 1995 model—the same year the XI Concord was first released.”
To meet the deadline, Impuls 3D scanned the Ducati and its famously beautiful fairing at Volke in Munich, who worked on the data for a week. With Philipp’s help, the specialist NeQu then designed and digitally built a fuel tank, a metal fuel cell, a revamped fairing and the front lights.
The files went to Creabis in Munich for printing—a day before Philipp got married. While he was on a brief honeymoon in Paris, his garage partner Matthias started fabricating the metal parts: the rear frame, a base plate for the seat, and the exhaust tip.
He also detabbed the frame, built new mounting points, and built the tank out of flat sheets of metal.
With one month to go, the detail work started. The electronics came from Motogadget, Magura supplied HC3 radial master cylinders with adjustable levers, and ABM Steelflex lines were hooked up.
The engine was treated to a custom airbox and then coated white—something you don’t often see—and Impuls have also built a custom exhaust system with ceramic-coated manifolds.
A Huawei Mate 20 smartphone with a curved OLED display doubles up as a navigation system and GPS speedo: a Motogadget Motoscope Pro instrument acts as a tachometer.
Impuls have deliberately gone for mismatched wheels and tires. At the front, there’s a black carbon Rotobox RBX2 wheel with a Pirelli Rosso Corsa II tire. The powder coated white wheel at the back is a PVM 10-spoked alloy shod with a Pirelli Diablo slick.
“We wanted to get the sole pattern of the shoe integrated into the tire profile,” says Philipp. “A great idea, but a real headache. In the end, it was the last part we finished.”
A few parts of the original fairing remain, since the mounting mechanism of the Ducati 916 is “nearly perfect”—and Impuls did not want to change the essentials of the air intakes and outlets.
The paint is mainly black and white, with just a few hints of ‘Concord blue’ to match the shoe. It was shot by Rico Ulbricht, who bore the brunt of the tight deadline but did an excellent job.
“As soon as a part was not needed for two days it went to Rico,” says Philipp. “Some parts had to be done twice, because they got scratched during the build—including the tank and part of the fairing.”
It was time for night shifts in the final week. The metal fuel tank was done, but the fuel filter and fuel pump weren’t yet integrated. “On the 916, the fuel pump sits right at the back of the fuel tank—where the original tank has its maximum height, and ours is flat. You could imagine how hard this part was.”
With the deadline looming, BSTN introduced Impuls to Kruno Nakic (above), a skilled craftsman who handles all of BSTN’s custom leather needs. “He rebuilt the seat pan with us, and sourced the materials,” says Philipp. The seat uses black neoprene, four kinds of outdoor material, and white leather, and was put together in just two days.
The tank was sealed, tested to three bars of pressure, and the fuel pump fitted. Then Impuls built a taillight out of a ten cubic centimeter block of acrylic glass, with help from Fabian Gatermann—the artist who worked on the ‘K101’ bike that shot Impuls to fame.
Just before the cameras started rolling for the publicity shoot, Matthias built a splitter for the lower part of the fairing—to give the bike an even more aggressive stance. And Niko at Lasergravur München engraved the tire rubber and the rims.
In a world of often tenuous ‘brand collaborations,’ this one hits the mark for us. It’s a radical look, it’s built using cutting-edge tech, and you just know it’ll be a blast to ride.
Michael Jordan, we’re sure, would approve.
Impuls | Facebook | Instagram | Images by Philipp Wulk, Filip Gorski, Stephan Bauer, Alex Schiller and Stefan Hobmaier
