We love Jens vom Brauck’s work. The man behind Cologne-based JvB-Moto has a pair of the sharpest eyes in the business, and a knack for stylish yet functional design. But things on the JvB-Moto front have been eerily quiet of late.
It turns out that Jens has been working on something very special indeed: a slimline BMW R nineT Scrambler with killer styling and paint.
It’s the first time BMW Motorrad and JvB-Moto have worked together, and it’s also the first officially sanctioned R nineT Scrambler build. And what a debut it is—the Scrambler now cuts a radically different line, but still looks like it would be immense fun to ride.
“Jens remodeled the Scrambler completely according to his own design conceptions, so the result is a totally new look,” says Ola Stenegärd, Head of Vehicle Design at BMW Motorrad.
Jens refers to the nineT as a “small bike with a big engine.” So he decided to ramp that concept up, slimming down the bodywork as much as possible, to emphasize the motor’s horizontal heft.
The overall aesthetic is—curiously—a lot more modern than the stock Scrambler. And that’s a completely intentional move on Jens’ part: “It’s a mix of functional design and old-school style—not retro,” he says. “Like a fast Unimog/Land Rover/bobber mix!”
It took Jens eight months of mulling, sketching and tinkering to get the Scrambler to match what was floating around in his imagination. “The biggest challenge was the tank,” he explains. “It’s much narrower, and six centimeters shorter, than the original, which completely alters the feeling of riding, since the rider has to sit much further up.”
Jens fabricated the 10-liter tank from aluminum, then set about modding the airbox beneath it. Ditching the airbox would have meant sacrificing the bike’s street legal status in Germany—but it had to be redesigned to both fit with and support the new tank.
It’s now sporting new dual intakes, with carbon fiber covers tying everything together. The electronics layout needed some serious tweaking too, to get everything to gel, and Jens even had to relocate the ABS module.
Out back, Jens built a new subframe—adorning it with a solo seat and a neat little aluminum tail fender. There’s also a new LED taillight, license plate bracket, and discreet Motogadget pin-style turn signals.
Lower down hangs a modified Arrow can, attached to the Scrambler’s reworked exhaust headers. The silencer bracket is custom too, and is attached to a strut that mounts on the same points as the bike’s original passenger peg support.
The nineT Scrambler goes, stops and turns pretty well off the shelf—as we reported in our review—so there was no need to blow the budget on performance upgrades. Jens simply added a set of carbon fiber wheel covers—adding visual bulk to the wheels without the weight penalty—and fitted Continental TKC80 tires.
Up front, he kept the Scrambler’s attractive speedo, tucking it neatly against a JvB-Moto signature headlight surround. The bars have been swapped out for cross-braced versions, but the controls and switches have been left well alone. Take a closer peek, and you’ll notice discreet LED turn signals just below the levers.
We’d take the JvB-Moto Scrambler in a heartbeat. It’s a remarkably svelte machine that looks like it’d handle daily abuse and weekend thrills with equal enthusiasm. Plus it’s loaded with sweet design details—like the unique hue on the valve covers, and the gradient paint on the front of the tank that cycles through BMW’s traditional racing colors.
Jens has a great history of making parts from his projects available via his parts partner, Kedo. But that’s not the case here—this scrambler is unfortunately totally unique; a ‘one of one’ build.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel though: Jens is about to start developing a range of R nineT parts soon. If they’re anywhere near as cool as the kit on this Scrambler, then sign us up. And it sounds like Ola Stenegärd wants to see more of the JvB-Moto magic too. “I hope it won’t be our last collaboration,” he says.
We’ll raise a glass of Schnaps to that.
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