Italian design house Drudi Performance, in the person of maestro Aldo Drudi, is famed for its helmet designs, notably those that adorn the helmet of Il Dottore, “The Doctor”, Valentino Rossi. Drawing on his involvement with motorcycle racing, Drudi has brought together a team of designers in what he calls “a fine style practice” at the Air Garage in Rimini, Italy to create the Drudi Performance Burasca 1200 concept bike.
Calling on the services of Paolo Picchi, mentored under the tutelage of design master Massimo Tamburini, the Burasca 1200 – Burasca meaning sea storm in Italian – use the Honda VFR1200 as its basis. Drudi calls his team the “D-Perf 3D-P department”, and its tasks is to revision the VFR1200 into a sports-tourer more befitting of the term ‘sports’.
It took the D-Perf team 15 months to bring the Burasca design concept to life, according to a Motorcycle News report. The design language of the Burasca 1200 is certainly bold and somewhat stunning, especially considering the rather frumpy looking VFR1200 it is based on. As is typical of contemporary Italian-designed motorcycles, numerous design details and touches abound.
This includes the use of various exotic materials and top-flight components. The front fork is an Ohlins unit with NIX 30 cartridges that come with adjustable everything, and as used by race teams around the world. The rear shock is another Ohlins unit, the TTX 30 GP, with remote reservoir.
According to the report, the Burasca 1200 weighs 30 kg less than the VFR1200, which will translate in rather more sporty performance versus the original’s, which was biased more to the touring side of things. The wheels are Fast Mec carbon/aluminium alloys, while machined Ergal aluminium components and uni-directional carbon-fibre dot the Burasca concept bike.
Retaining the original frame, engine and gearbox of the Honda VFR1200, the Burasca 1200 crowns its design with a custom-made Akrapovic dual-muffler exhaust. No word on whether this very brave design will make it into production, but Drudi’s website says the Burasca 1200 is ‘coming soon’.
