Two London creatives join forces to produce an alluring BMW R100 café racer.
“We’re not pros,” says Andrea Felice, one half of the London-based custom bike outfit Settenero Motorcycles, “because we earn a living with other ventures. But it wouldn’t be fair to call us garage builders either, considering that we have two workshops kitted to the brim. I guess we’re somewhere in between.”
Andrea, an experienced furniture maker originally from Italy, runs Settenero with Simon Black, an English sculptor who works with metal. The two met in London in the early 2000s, while working out of neighboring studios.
“We realized that we are both workshop rats,” Andrea tells us. “Basically, even when we don’t have to do paid work, we end up fiddling with something in the workshop. It’s a big part of our social life!”
It didn’t take long for the pair to turn their attention to custom motorcycles. It made sense, after all—Andrea’s workshop is packed with a lathe, a five-axis CNC machine, an English wheel, and more, and Simon has everything from TIG welders to plasma cutters. And so, Settenero Motorcycles was born.
This lithe 1982 BMW R100 café racer beautifully showcases Andrea and Simon’s collective capability—and their discerning taste. Cutting an almost liquid silhouette and wrapped in warm grey hues, it’s as alluring as it is clean.
“The bike is called ‘Soffio’—which in Italian means ‘light breath of air’,” explains Andrea. “We liked the name, but also the design gives the sensation of lightness.”
To create this “sensation of lightness,” Settenero fabricated all-new aluminum bodywork for the BMW. A compact fairing wraps around the front end, reaching backwards to flank the elongated fuel tank. Knee indents narrow the design towards the seat, which is tucked against a handmade cowl that eschews typical café racer shapes.
A new subframe supports the tailpiece, while a bespoke mono-shock arrangement adds more visual space to the rear. The shock itself is a Hagon unit, while the front forks were borrowed from a later model BMW R1100. The R100 uses the R1100’s 19” front wheel and its original 18” rear wheel, but both have been rebuilt with stainless steel spokes.
The cockpit sports a CNC-machined top yoke, with a slim Motogadget speedo Frenched in. A Daytona tacho sits further forward, cradled in a handmade fairing bracket that also holds the bike’s dummy lights. Low-slung clip-ons are fitted with Renthal grips, and Motogadget switches and turn signals.
It all sits in the shade of the BMW’s windscreen—another one-off part. “It took seven attempts to make, with our infrared heater and some vacuum contraption,” Andrea quips.
No stone was left unturned on this slick café racer. Settenero added alloy rear-sets, a classy stainless steel exhaust system, and a custom-made stainless steel side stand, “which became a bit of an obsession, because the standard ones we found were fugly.” Under the hood, the whole thing was rewired around a Motogadget mo.unit controller.
Settenero rebuilt the entire drivetrain too, upgrading it with a 1,070 cc kit from Siebenrock, ported heads, a twin-spark conversion, and 38 mm Dell’Orto carbs. The finishes are as minimalistic as they come; natural metal textures on the engine, glossy paint on the bodywork, and luxe upholstery by Bespoke Leather London on the saddle.
True to his opening statement, Andrea confirms that there was no client or brief on this project—just a blank canvas for him and Simon to express themselves on. “We work on bikes because we love it. We’ve never thought of doing it as a profession, and we’ve never accepted any commission requests either, because that would have implied adapting to a customer’s demands.”
“We work on one bike at a time, then we sell it, and then we make another one. Luckily, we don’t do this as a business, because we would have been bankrupt by now!”
Settenero Motorcycles | Instagram | Images by Joe Starbuck / Twenty Twenty Photography
