JJ-Cobas BMW K 1ooR "Flying Brick"
We ride the first Spanish/German racebike - again
By
ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS BY KYOICHI NAKAMURA
t's hard to think of a more unlikely
basis for a modern road racer than
the four-cylinder BMW Kl00 "Flying
Brick" - or a more unlikely person
than Spanish GP chassis guru Antonio Cobas to create such a bike. Yet
that's exactly what happened almost
20 years ago, when Cobas and his
patron Jacinto"JJ" Moriana decided
to construct a BMW endurance racer
using the engine of the then-newlylaunched four-cylinder Kl00 model.
Their aim was to achieve victory in
what was then Spain's most prestigious road race, the classic Montjuic
24 Horas, run in the heat of July
through the streets of the hillside park
in the center of Barcelona, which in
1992 would have provided the site
that permitted the Catalan capital to
host the Olympic games.
But almost a decade earlier, in
1984, Montjuic meant only one thing:
the opportunity for 100,OOO-plus
bike-mad Catalans to spend a hot
summer day and night partying it up
while watching the world's top
endurance racers racing round and
round (and round and round, for an
entire day) their city's parkland circuit, formerly the host for many years
to the Spanish GP before safety
issues caused it to be moved to Jara-
I
46
FEBRUARY 26,
2003'
eye
mao This exposure to such a huge
public, as well as the heavy TV cover-
•
age and intense press interest, was
what persuaded Moriana to commission Cobas to build the bike - for as
one of Barcelona's biggest BMW car
dealers, and the German marque's
largest motorcycle dealer in the
whole of Spain, JJ knew that building
a SuperBrick racer to promote the
new K 100 range would be good for
business. He didn't need to win the
race (though that would be nice), just
be competitive and make a good
showing with some newsworthy star
riders aboard the bike.
n •
_
s
e
The BMW K 1OO-powered, JJ-Cobas
framed "Flying Brick" was originally
designed to compete in the Mont,iuic
24 Horas - the classic Spanish street
race - in 1984.
So that's what happened. Moriana
negotiated a deal with BMW Iberia for
a pair of K100 engines. Braun
domestic appliances was enlisted as
an eager sponsor (then, as now,
motorcycle racing is second only to
soccer in terms of sporting popularity
in Spain), and Cobas set about the
task of wrapping a frame around the
hefty engine, weighing 220 pounds
complete with swingarm and drive-
shaft. For the man who three yeaTs
