Louis Lepoix BMW R12

The other day I got an email from a man called Bertrand Lepoix. He’d spotted our piece on the amazing 1934 BMW R7, and sent in some amazing pictures from his family archives, including a couple of this motorcycle. “My father Louis Lucien Lepoix (1918-1988) was an industrial designer—French born, but mostly based in Germany during his career. With no backing of any kind from BMW, he designed and constructed an extreme streamlined bike based on a BMW R12 chassis in 1947,” says Bertrand. There are similarities here with the work of famed American designers Norman Bel Geddes and Raymond...