Munich, Germany - When BMW and Lego teamed up to create the first Lego kit of a BMW motorcycle, the resulting Lego Technic BMW R 1200 GS Adventure became something more than just a model kit.
It’s quite a challenging kit to assemble, with 603 parts, including working Telever front suspension, shaft drive with universal joints and even a moving boxer-twin engine.
But Lego Technic kits often come as a two-in-one, the parts of which can be used to build an alternative model (Transformers rule!) and in this case, the parts of the LEGO Technic BMW R 1200 GS Adventure can also be used to build the Hover Ride Design Concept.
It’s an futuristic design for a hoverbike - a future tech long beloved of science-fiction film-makers, which may not be technically feasible (not yet anyway!) but it’s fun to imagine that one day all BMW’s could be made this way.
The parts of the LEGO Technic BMW R 1200 GS Adventure can also be used to build the Hover Ride Design Concept.
Then the engineering students at BMW’s training academy, the BMW Junior Company, took the idea one big step further. In the same way that the parts of the Lego kit can be used to build a hoverbike model, they stripped a real R1200 GS Adventure and used the parts to build a full-scale model of the Hover Ride Design Concept.
OK, a lot of the components for the hoverbike, such as the front wheel-rim modified to become a propeller - had to be specially fabricated for the project.
That meant roping students from different disciplines to provide the necessary expertise, which made it an exercise in teamwork - and an impressive demonstration of the craftsmanship the students learn at the Junior Company.
The full-size Hover Ride Design Concept is now on display at Lego World in Copenhagen, and will later be shown all over Denmark before moving to sites such as the BMW research centre Munich and the BMW Welt museum.