Brough Superior in race to be ready

British brand working flat out to get new V-twin finished before new
Euro laws kick in

Reborn British brand Brough Superior is undergoing intensive final testing of the new in-house developed V-twin engine that will be the centrepiece of the all-new SS100, expected to reach owners in early 2016.

These images show the engine undergoing extended dyno testing to sort out the final stages of homologation testing, allowing the SS100 to sneak into the dying days of Euro3 emissions and noise regulation homologation.

Brough Superior was brought back into the limelight at the 2013 Milan Motorcycle Show and the company, based in Toulouse, France but under the ownership of British bike enthusiast Mark Upham, has been working feverishly to get the bike engineered for sale, working through several iterations to finesse the design.

The project is running later than anticipated because some serious re-engineering of the bikes has been done to improve rider comfort, performance and to tidy up some of the design elements of the bike, which will be priced from £36,000 (plus local taxes and on-the-road charges).

The new Brough uses a DOHC, four-valve-per-cylinder, 997cc V-twin with power now pegged at just over 100bhp. The design of the engine has been worked on by Boxer Design in Toulouse, along with tuning house Akira. The engine is a stressed member, mated to a steel trellis frame and titanium subframe, with Öhlins twin shocks and Öhlins fork.

There are now 10 prototypes fully built and ready-to-ride, and the engines you see here have spent weeks being bench tested to ensure reliable performance.

Upham told MCN: “The amount of work we have been doing has been huge. We are right on the very brink of getting the bike signed off and ready for homologation and the past few weeks have seen lots of work going into engine bench testing to make sure we are ready.”

The next step for Brough is to get the bike signed off for Euro3 homologation testing before January 1, 2016, as it would fall into Euro4 compliance at that point, requiring it to be re-engineered with integrated ABS and that will take months and many, many thousands of pounds to achieve.

MCN will be testing the Brough Superior in the coming weeks.