The destination for history
Blitz Motorcycles: In pictures
Back in 2009, Fred Jourden and Hugo Jézégabel couldn’t find any that fitted their specifications – so they decided to make their own. Leaving their 9–5 jobs they set up Blitz Motorcycles in Paris, creating a garage where they would build only the most beautiful and unique motorcycles, all hand-designed, custom-built and tailored to the rider. This was the start of an adventure that would take them from strength to strength, and from garage to desert to mountain.
Road trips
The bespoke motorbikes built by Blitz Motorcycles serve a purpose in getting from A to B, but they also provide the means for making memorable adventures. Avoiding straight lines and direct routes, Fred and Hugo have had the immense pleasure of exploring Europe via its secondary roads. Running Blitz Motorcycles has done nothing to dampen Fred and Hugo’s enthusiasm for road trips and whenever an opportunity to make the most of the fresh air and freedom has presented itself, they have downed tools and left the premises. The road trip, and the way of life that goes with it, is something Blitz Motorcycles are proud to be ambassadors for.
Custom Motorcycles
Since founding Blitz Motorcycles in 2010, Fred and Hugo have transformed more than seventy machines. Each machine is transformed to suit the owner’s personality and Blitz’s ‘visual signature’ is expressed through the installation of a non-native tank and through maintaining trace’s of the bike’s past history (e.g. rust, dents etc.). Owner’s never know in advance how their bike will turn out, they only find out once it is finished.
Inspired by The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen, this machine uses a 1963 BMW R60/2 as the donor motorcycle.
The English owner of this motorcycle, who had lived in South America, had been nicknamed ‘El Tigre’ by Argentinian friends. Blitz Motorcycles thought it would be fun to use the Triumph ‘Tiger’ emblem (as seen on its iconic Bonneville Tiger model in the 1960s) for the donor 2001 Kawasaki W650, a Japanese bike openly inspired by the Bonneville.
France’s oldest insurance company asked Blitz Motorcycles to build the most ‘extreme’ motorcycle they could. A few months after its completion the BMW Museum in Munich asked if they could put the machine on display. Although the donor motorcycle is a BMW R100 RT1, it features a Yamaha 500 XT tank, complete with its original emblems and colours. This means that Blitz Motorcycles are the only people, to date, to have brought a machine not manufactured by BMW into this ‘sacred temple’.
Black Pearl is Hugo’s personal machine and by far the least comfortable motorbike Blitz have ever built. As it has been lowered by five inches, potholes and speed bumps are best avoided! But every time Hugo rides it, all eyes are on him. It was named Black Pearl because he looks a little bit like Jack Sparrow!
Retro Futuristic
‘We are two children disappointed by the 1980s’
Because of all the anticipatory cultural artefacts that were produced in the 1980s, Fred and Hugo grew up with certain expectations of how the 2020s should look, fantasising about hoverboards, flying cars and motorbikes shaped as never before. Yet none of these ideas came to fruition. This is why they decided to breathe new life into this ‘retro-futuristic’ fantasy, best represented by two of their creations: Black Dot - Mark I and Black Dot - Mark II.
Unless stated, all images © Blitz Motorcycles
