Brixton 1200 - Austrian designed, Chinese made Bonneville rival
By Ben Purvis
Back in 2019, Brixton fired a warning shot at Triumph's Bonneville by showing a large-capacity parallel twin concept bike with 1960s-inspired styling. Patents have now emerged that show the finished version of the design.
The indications are that Brixton, which is part of the Austrian KSR Group, with bikes built in China by Gaokin, will be ready to reveal the showroom version of the bike later this year.
Although the company was light on technical details when the concept version appeared in 2019, it's understood to use a 1200 cc parallel twin, with water-cooling but fins on the cylinders and head to give the look of a traditional air-cooled motor. The engine appears to use a similar layout to the Bonneville, with an outline that suggests a single overhead camshaft design with rocker-operated valves - although we've yet to see inside it to confirm that.
The new patent images confirm that the production bike's styling will closely follow the original concept version, ticking all the classic 'Brit-bike' boxes with a cradle frame, gaiter-clad forks and twin-shock suspension. The parallel twin engine forms a major part of the bike's appearance, with finned rings clamping the exhausts to the cylinder head and pipes that splay either side of the frame's downtubes and run into a separate, low-slung silencer on each side.
Where the concept had short, stubby pipes, the production version has to meet emissions and noise limits, and Brixton's solution is the same as Triumph's, with a cleverly hidden exhaust collector box under the engine. So, while the pipes are designed to look like they sweep straight from the cylinder head to the silencers, in fact the gasses are diverted into the collector box, containing all the required catalysts and emissions control kit to bring it under the Euro 5 limits.
The production bike also gets a revised frame design, with bolt-on pillion pegs rather than the welded-on design of the concept. That's a move that means it will be easy for Brixton to make more variations on the theme, for instance a single-seat café racer or a high-piped scrambler, without having to change the chassis.
The patents also show a level of attention to detail that's likely to please customers. The Brixton branding is moulded into the bar grips and etched into the radiator's grill, and also appears on the bar clamps and the ignition lock. The company's X-shaped logo is also seen on the filler cap and even the footpeg rubbers. It's detail stuff, but the sort of thing that separates generic rebranded Chinese bikes from purpose-designed and manufactured machines.
We can also see that the brakes are from Nissin, replacing the Brembo-owned J.Juan calipers of the concept, while details like the seat, licence plate bracket, headlight and instrument mounts are also refined for a more production-ready appearance.
