Håkan Lindberg is a self-taught custom bike painter who has made a big name for himself in this business, so seeing BMW Motorrad ask him to work on the Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation show bike should not be a surprise to anyone.
The 51-year-old Swede has been doing custom paint jobs since the age of 16, and there are thousands of cars and bikes carrying his work around. Still, the "Mission: Impossible mission" put his skills to the test.
Austrian Piers Spencer Phillips was the designer of the bike, and when the sketches arrived, Lindberg knew that this job would be tougher than the usual painting works he had done before. Piers Spencer had already decided that the Rogue Nation S1000RR would be red and black, but no other color specifications were made.
This left Håkan with the major task of choosing which types of red and black were to be used. And as if this were not enough, the very short deadline for the completion of the bike put some extra pressure. "Although it was already decided that the bike would be black and red, I got to determine exactly what types of red and black it would be. The other challenges were the time in which we had to do it, in combination that it would be filmed, but the results went beyond even our expectations," Lindberg says.
The complex panel design of the S1000RR made things even more difficult
Used to working with candy and flake colors, Håkan tried to use water-based paints as much as possible, but some of the custom colors are not available in water-based format, so Standox ones had to be brought in.
Lindberg was not willing to give away too many trade secrets, so he only mentions that the panels were sanded with 800 and 1200 grit paper repeatedly before and during the painting. After priming and undercoating, the S1000RR got the base color, which was a custom light silver red metallic, with gradients in metallic black.
Five to seven coats of candy apple red went in also, followed by three coats of clear varnish. Some more sanding in key areas for fitting in the decals and another three clear coats later, the panels were ready for polishing.
The paint job alone took around 40 hours of work, and the result looks impeccable. Håkan did not mention any price for such a job, but said that he can make similar bikes for customers. Enjoy the pics!
Google News