When Ash Thorp was recently tasked with designing the Batmobile for the latest Batman flick, The Batman, the world-renowned concept artist opted to take things in a novel direction, envisioning a mid-engined ’69 Charger-based muscle car concept that a young Bruce Wayne could have built himself in his garage. So when the San Diego-based artist was tapped to also design the film’s Batcycle, Thorp took a similar approach, delivering an equally-aggressive two-wheeler that a billionaire vigilante could have cooked up himself.
“Once the Batmobile was sorted, doing the bikes was much easier as I had the formula that I wanted to follow,” Thorp tells HICONSUMPTION. “We basically wanted to find a way to connect the DNA of both the cycle and the Batmobile: exposed inner frame, mechanical parts, raw and accessible — both needed to feel hand-built and special. Something Bruce could make himself but unique enough to make it iconic.” As per usual, when coming up with the design of the Batcycle, Ash took inspiration from a myriad of sources. Alongside BMW airhead-based cafe racers, Thorp’s Batcycle also features an exposed lattice-type chassis inspired by the trellis frames used on Ducatis, and an extended dual-sided swing-arm that was inspired by stretched Hayabusa drag bikes.
Sporting a lowered drag bike stance, the Batcycle boasts an ultra-low-profile tracker-style tail section, a dual horizontally-mounted rear-shock setup, a shortened, inverted front-end with a dual-disc braking setup, bolted wheel disc covers, a one-off belly-pan design, a custom bikini fairing, clip-on handlebars, and a quad-pipe exhaust that runs beneath the engine’s protruding cylinder heads and terminates just beneath the build’s rear sets. Just like with the mid-engined Batmobile, the Batcycle’s powertrain is on full display. Rather than utilizing an existing car or bike engine, Thorp opted to create his own design — a Frankensteined air-cooled boxer four. “I originally slapped two boxer twins on one another and then made my own block concept with vertical cooling fins,” the designer tells us.
All in all, the Batcycle is a thoroughly impressive design and a worthy two-wheeled counterpart to the mid-engined V8 Batmobile. And, per Thorp’s brief, the bike genuinely looks like something that could have been whipped up by a lone individual in their garage. “That’s how I would have done it if I was Bruce,” relays Thorp.
