Kinetic Art: Brough Superior RMB01

Brough Superior and Watchmaker Richard Mille join forces on a work of kinetic art…

One of the most striking machines at ArtRide 2026 in Biarritz, France, was the Brough Superior RMB01. Built in collaboration with Swiss watch brand Richard Mille, the RMB01 is an ultra-exclusive, track-focused motorcycle that brings together two worlds obsessed with precision: high-end watchmaking and boutique motorcycle engineering. It is limited to 150 units, hand-assembled in France, and built around a 997cc V-twin with a forged carbon exoskeleton and machining details more often associated with high-end wristwatches than motorcycles.

The RMB01 isn’t simply an SS100 with a luxury badge. It’s stranger and more ambitious: a board-track-inspired, CNC-machined track machine that looks like it escaped from a Richard Mille display case and sprouted wheels. The result is part superbike, part art object, and part mechanical manifesto. We decided to take a deeper look at the machine, with show photos courtesy of Craig Stuart (@scrambler_ams).

The Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles Meets Watchmaking…

Brough Superior has always occupied a peculiar place in motorcycle history. Founded by George Brough in Nottingham in 1919, the original company built some of the most desirable motorcycles of the interwar years. Broughs were fast, expensive, and beautifully finished. The most famous models, including the SS80 and SS100, helped establish the marque’s reputation as the “Rolls-Royce of motorcycles.”

That phrase was not just empty hype. In period, Brough Superior machines represented the uppermost end of motorcycle ownership: expensive, hand-built, glamorous, and often bought by the sort of people who could have afforded almost anything. The most famous of those owners was T.E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — whose love of Brough Superiors became part of both his own legend and the marque’s.

Civilian Brough Superior motorcycle production ended around the outbreak of the Second World War, but the name refused to die. After decades of dormancy, the marque was revived in the modern era, eventually finding new life in Toulouse, France, under Thierry Henriette and the team behind the reborn Brough Superior Motorcycles.

The modern company has not tried to recreate the past exactly. Instead, it has leaned into the idea of Brough Superior as a luxury engineering house — motorcycles built with exotic materials, exposed mechanics, distinctive front suspension, and the sort of handmade, low-volume presence that fits the original spirit. That made Brough Superior a uniquely natural partner for Richard Mille.

Richard Mille watches are famous for skeletonized movements, visible mechanics, advanced materials, extreme prices, and a close relationship with motorsport: “A racing machine on the wrist.” They are not subtle, nor meant to be. A Richard Mille watch is designed to make the movement part of the visual drama. The RMB01 applies that same philosophy to a motorcycle.

Board Track Spirit, Modern Engineering

Brough Superior says the RMB01 takes inspiration from board trackers: the raw, stripped-down racers that thundered around wooden oval circuits in the early 20th century. Though the bike looks more like a neo café racer to us, you can see the inspiration in the bike’s silhouette. There’s the elongated tank, minimalist seat, a long and low stance, and a sense that every nonessential surface has been cut away. Like the board trackers of old, the RMB01 is visually defined by its mechanical core: the engine. The machine is built to show how it works.

The RMB01’s lines are muscular, almost feline, and the extensive “skeletonization” echoes the cutaway aesthetic of Richard Mille watches. The result is a machine that seems suspended around its own mechanical organs.

The 997cc V-Twin

At the center of the RMB01 is a 997cc, liquid-cooled, DOHC 88-degree V-twin with four valves per cylinder and chain-and-gear-driven cams. Brough Superior lists output at 130 horsepower. The engine casings are machined from solid blocks of high-magnesium 5000-series aluminum using five-axis CNC machining. The process begins with around 160 kg of raw material and produces 23 kg of finished parts. The gearbox is a six-speed cassette type, paired with a hydraulic multi-plate wet clutch and APTC slipper function. 

Aluminum Frame, Carbon Exoskeleton

The RMB01’s chassis architecture is one of its defining features. Brough Superior describes the frame as a CNC-machined aluminum structure using the engine as a stressed member, combined with a forged carbon exoskeleton. The bike doesn’t look like a conventional motorcycle wearing carbon bodywork. Instead, the carbon structure appears to be part of the machine’s very bones.

The front suspension is a Fior-type CNC-machined aluminum fork with twin articulated triangular links and an adjustable monoshock. This style of front end has become part of the modern Brough Superior identity, separating steering and braking forces while providing anti-dive behavior under hard braking.

Out back, a CNC-machined aluminum swingarm pivots in the engine crankcases and works with a progressive-link monoshock. The entire motorcycle is built around the idea that the engine, chassis, suspension, and visible mechanical details should feel integrated rather than assembled from unrelated parts.

That philosophy is very Richard Mille as well. In a high-end mechanical watch, the case, bridges, screws, dial, movement, and visible architecture are all part of a single experience. On the RMB01, Brough Superior has attempted something similar on two wheels.

In fact, the RMB01 is full of watchmaking references, some obvious and some more subtle. The custom wheels use CNC-machined aluminum rims and hubs in an assembled design inspired by the gears of watch movements. The overlapping hubs and brake rotors are meant to suggest a stacked mechanical system similar to a tourbillon. The instrument binnacle follows the same logic, with visual cues drawn from Richard Mille dials and movements. The whole motorcycle is intended to reward a keen eye for detail.

Track-Only…

The RMB01 is no practical roadster. It’s not a touring motorcycle, commuter, retro naked, or Sunday backroad companion. It’s marketed as a track-focused machine for a very small group of owners who, we all know, are as likely to display it as ride it.

That will irritate some of you, and understandably so. A motorcycle that costs as much as a supercar is an easy target, especially if it’s unlikely to be ridden in anger. But machines like this occupy their own category. The RMB01 is something closer to a track-only hypercar or a complicated, high-end watch. It’s designed to be ridden, yes, but also designed to be owned, studied, and collected. That tension, in some ways, is part of what makes it interesting. And the astronomical price tag is what allows such machines to exist.

What’s more, the original Brough Superior was never a people’s motorcycle. It was for buyers who wanted speed, luxury, craftsmanship, status, and individuality…with price no object. In fact, the £170–£180 that an original SS100 cost in the 1920s was more than a working mechanic might earn in a year.

Back in the 1920s, the ultimate luxury motorcycle had a hand-finished tank, big V-twin, Brooklands credibility, and a famous literary patron. In the 2020s, it has CNC-machined aluminum, forged carbon, a structural engine, a Fior-type front end, and design language borrowed from haute watchmaking.

Limited to 150

Brough Superior says the RMB01 will be built in a limited series of 150 units, each hand-assembled in France and tested on a bench before delivery. Four versions are listed: NPC Series, Nocturnal Sapphire, Selene, and Pearl of Speed. Each plays with color, finish, and material treatment, but the underlying concept remains the same: a track-focused collaboration between two of the world’s most storied luxury brands.

Reported pricing places the RMB01 firmly in ultra-luxury territory, around the £200,000–£210,000 mark depending on source and market. That’s an absurd amount of money for a motorcycle in conventional terms. But the RMB01 isn’t competing with conventional motorcycles so much as Richard Mille watches, track-only hypercars, and the original status of the Brough Superior brand.

Brough Superior RMB01 Specs

Model: Brough Superior RMB01
Collaboration: Richard Mille x Brough Superior
Use: Track-focused motorcycle
Production: Limited to 150 units
Assembly: Hand-assembled in France
Engine: 997cc liquid-cooled DOHC 88-degree V-twin
Valvetrain: Four valves per cylinder, composite chain / gear cam drive
Power: 130 hp
Bore x Stroke: 94 mm x 71.8 mm
Gearbox: Six-speed cassette type
Clutch: Hydraulic multi-plate wet clutch with APTC slipper function
Frame: CNC-machined aluminum frame with structural engine and forged carbon exoskeleton
Front Suspension: Fior-type CNC-machined aluminum fork with twin articulated triangular links
Front Travel: 85 mm
Rear Suspension: CNC-machined aluminum swingarm pivoting in engine crankcases, progressive-link monoshock
Rear Travel: 113 mm
Rake / Trail: 22.9 degrees / 86.9 mm
Front Brakes: Dual 320mm stainless discs with four-piston radial calipers
Rear Brake: 230mm stainless disc with two-piston caliper
Wheels: CNC-machined aluminum assembled rim / hub design
Front Tire: 120/70 ZR17
Rear Tire: 200/55 ZR17
Length: 2114 mm
Width: 725.5 mm
Seat Height: 808 mm
Wheelbase: 1493 mm
Versions: NPC Series, Nocturnal Sapphire, Selene, Pearl of Speed

Follow the Photographer

Craig Stuart (@scrambler_ams)

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