Hand-built and hyper-exclusive, only 185 Lightspeeds will ever be made, each one tailored to its owner
British-based boutique manufacturer Langen Motorcycles has unveiled the production-ready version of its power-packed 1191cc Lightspeed V-twin streetfighter, launched two years ago at the UK’s Birmingham Show and under intensive development since then. First deliveries of the 185 hand-crafted examples of this limited-edition model will take place in the middle of this year, with exports to the USA, Australasia and EU countries to follow in January 2027, according to Langen’s founder and CEO Chris Ratcliffe.
The Lightspeed was unveiled in prototype form in 2023 as the follow-up to Langen’s first hand-made series production motorcycle, the 250cc Two Stroke powered by an Italian-made Vins engine with direct EFI. All but two have now been sold of the 100 examples on offer of that ring-ding limited-edition cafe racer, which defied convention by reviving the performance two-stroke engine for street use. This has left Ratcliffe free to focus on the Lightspeed follow-up, as his Lancashire-based company’s latest offering in what he says is its continued quest to build unique, high-performance, limited-edition motorcycles, using the very best components and fuelled by the company’s stated passion to combine innovation with emotion.
BESPOKE BY DESIGN
A head-turning streetfighter designed by Ratcliffe, the Lightspeed is powered by the liquid-cooled DOHC 72° V-twin eight-valve engine (measuring 106 x 67.5mm) manufactured in the USA by Buell Motorcycles in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Running a high 13.4:1 compression ratio aimed at delivering ground-stomping acceleration and top gear roll-on, this 1191cc V-twin delivers a claimed 138kW (185hp) at 10,600rpm at the crank, transmitted via a six-speed transmission with oil-bath slipper clutch.
It was originally developed by Rotax to power the Buell 1125R produced from 2007 until October 2009, when Buell Motorcycles was shut down by its Harley-Davidson parent. But this engine then formed the basis of the EBR 1190RS that Erik Buell Racing campaigned in the AMA Superbike series in 2012-14 with sponsorship support from major Indian manufacturer Hero Motorcycles. It stepped up to World Superbike that latter year, with a first points-scoring finish at Laguna Seca by wildcard rider Larry Pegram. After going bust in 2015, the firm has been revived under new ownership as the Buell Motorcycle Co. It recently launched production of its Roland Sands-designed Super Cruiser powered by the same V-twin used in the Langen Lightspeed.
The Langen-prepped engine, purchased directly from the Buell Motorcycle Co, has a UK-developed exhaust with massive 60mm headers. It produces a hefty claimed 138Nm of torque at 8200rpm. It’s fitted with twin Bosch 60mm throttle bodies, each carrying dual injectors, while engine management comes courtesy of Langen’s own ECU. This features switchable traction control, wheelie control, launch control, rear wheel lift-off detection and a choice of three riding modes, Sport, Touring and Rain.
“We offer customers the option of a different final drive gearing anywhere from 41T to 44T on the rear sprocket, depending on what kind of riding they want to do,” says Ratcliffe. “Each bike is built to order, so we ask each of our customers to visit our factory in Wigan if possible, and we’ll tailor the motorcycle to suit them personally – handlebar shape and height, seat height and cushioning, footrests, engine mapping, final drive ratio, you name it. This is the two-wheeled equivalent of a made-to-measure suit, from a bespoke tailor.”
The Lightspeed’s Buell engine is wrapped in a high tensile, laser cut, chrome-moly tubular steel spaceframe chassis designed and made by Langen Motorcycles in its factory. This is fitted with Öhlins suspension, with a fully adjustable 48mm FGRT upside-down fork and Langen’s trademark twin piggyback gas STX shocks, which are adjustable for compression and rebound damping, and spring preload.
HEL Performance radially-mounted four-piston CNC-machined monobloc billet brake calipers grab twin 320mm EBC floating front discs, and a 265mm single rear disc with two-piston caliper take care of braking, with dual-channel Continental Cornering ABS included in this package.
Langen’s own beautifully made 17-inch forged aluminium wheels, CNC-machined in-house, carry Pirelli Diablo Rosso III rubber, with the wide 6in rear rim carrying a massive 240/45 design statement of a tyre.
Seat height is 790mm, and the distinctive CNC-machined circular TFT dash features a touchscreen and switch cube interface. The minimalist bodywork is all made from carbon fibre V-Weave, including the large but shapely shroud over the 19-litre metal fuel tank.
According to Ratcliffe, at the time of writing, 16 build slots had already been reserved of the 185 on offer, several of them by existing Two Stroke customers who have already placed deposits ‘off plan’ for the Lightspeed without yet seeing the finished bike, or any confirmation of the price. Besides various EU countries, Langen reports expressions of interest from potential owners in the USA and Australasia, where Ratcliffe says distribution will be handled by a small number of strategically located outlets.
“Our aim at Langen is to push boundaries by building bikes that are out of the ordinary, and heaps of fun to ride, which we hope will please people interested in something completely different,” he says. “The Lightspeed is the latest of several unusual but exciting such models we plan to deliver in coming years. It holds a family resemblance to the Two Stroke, but delivers the thrills of ownership in a different way. The bike itself is designed to be both a long-distance mile-eater and a corner-carving streetfighter. It has the character of a muscle cruiser or a streetfighter, but the practicality of a sports tourer. It’s a versatile but thrilling motorcycle, and the Buell engine is the making of it. When you throw a leg over the Lightspeed, you soon realise it’s not just another motorcycle, but a heart-pounding,
soul-stirring symphony of power and style, yet with added practicality.”
To check out the veracity of that claim, the morning after the Lightspeed was unveiled to the press I was offered the chance to spend a couple of hours riding Ratcliffe’s latest pride and joy along the twisting lanes and faster stretches of Sussex country roads – trusting, because two days later this very bike was to be unveiled to the public at the Motorcycle Live Birmingham Show. So, no pressure then – especially since the overnight rain was slow to dry on this chilly morning! But all’s well that ends well, and I was able to ride the Lightspeed sufficiently hard to get a good handle on what it’s going to be like once final development has been completed.
MUSCLE MEETS FINESSE
First off, this is a bike with undoubted presence when you see it out in the open air, not on stage under the lights. It looks butch but svelte, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron – it’s a super-stylish, power-packed package.
Climbing aboard the Lightspeed’s unexpectedly plushly padded 790mm-high seat revealed a near-perfect riding position for my 180cm stature, with the wide, taper-section alloy handlebar pulled back just right to give a slightly leaned-forward but fairly upright stance. The rear of the tank shroud is slightly waisted, which allowed me to put both feet on the ground at a traffic light – it’s an accessible package that will be okay for shorter riders. This also makes it accommodating for your knees, with the footrests well positioned just far enough back to be sporty without being uncomfortable. I can imagine covering a good distance on this bike without getting tired – though I’d like to have some better mirrors to watch out for blue lights behind me than the triumph of form over function that the ones on the Langen at present represent!
Well, I say “a good distance”. That’s provided I had some wind protection for the sustained high speeds this motorcycle is surely capable of. Naked and unashamed as I was for my ride, the Lightspeed has a great sense of chuckability – it eats up turns in twisty country lanes, the well-chosen steering geometry and the great leverage from that wide-ish handlebar combining to make this latest Langen a real-world sportbike for the ages. The Pirelli tyres did their usual good job of heating up quicker than any of their rivals on a cool early winter day, though I’ll admit to taking care to get that huge rear hoop properly tuned up before exploiting even a fraction of the massive torque that the Buell engine delivers.
I had only the Touring riding mode available, with the mapping for the other two still a work in progress, but that provided a progressive pickup from a closed throttle, which makes you feel in control of the power delivery and especially the torque at all times. And, much to my surprise, that fat rear tyre didn’t heavy up the steering nearly as much as I expected – the Lightspeed felt pretty deft in changing direction without my having to tug too hard on the handlebar.
Moreover, with so much torque available at almost any revs, there was no sense of the TC holding you back – it just did its job in acting as a safety net on the midrange settings I was using. And when the rear end did start to drift a couple of times on a slippery surface, it was easy to correct via the leverage from the handlebar coupled with that controllable throttle response.
The only glitch to the handling was the fact that the right-hand exhaust was set way too low, so ended up scraping the deck at moderate angles of lean. Apparently this was the first time the Lightspeed had been ridden in something approaching anger, where such defects become apparent – but at the same time that’s a compliment to Ratcliffe and his team that they got the rest of it so right. This is a very confidence-inspiring motorcycle, which makes you feel you’re in charge of affairs while exploiting the performance of that fabulous engine.
ONE OF THE GREAT MOTORCYCLE ENGINES OF OUR TIME
I’ve been fortunate to ride every single iteration of this Buell V-twin engine, from trying in vain to keep up with Jeremy McWilliams on the original 1125R at the 2007 Laguna Seca press launch, through the different versions of the cubed-up EBR 1190 street models up to and including the factory Superbike race version I track-tested at Barber in Alabama.
There’s no doubt that this is one of the great motorcycle engines of our time, albeit so little known, yet here brought to the street by Langen inits most refined form, for its most ideal customer application yet.
For anyone who raved about Rotax’s first take on such an engine, the Aprilia RSV1000 60° V-twin that took Troy Corser to Superbike success as well as powering a range of variants from the legendary Tuono streetfighter to the Caponord ADV model, this 72° V-twin Buell engine in the Langen Lightspeed is the ultimate extension of that design.
Such a positive view is surely helped by the wonderful engine note emanating from the only slightly baffled twin megaphone exhausts, which Ratciffe knows will have to be reduced in volume to satisfy the noise police on a global basis. While it picks up smoothly from just over 2500rpm upwards once a low-speed hiccup has been overcome (which the Langen team are working on fixing), this heavily oversquare 106mm x 67.5mm engine will accelerate from rest with very little clutch slip, but won’t accept wide-open throttle with zero transmission snatch until the revs pass the 4000rpm mark or so. It’s very tractable in midrange, and there’s serious mumbo above 7000rpm. That’s when, aided by the high 13.4:1 compression, the Lightspeed really takes off, with a fierce, addictive and quite uncompromising pull towards that 11,500rpm rev limiter. There’s no significant vibration thanks to the triple counterbalancers and, while the engine sounds meaty and lusty at low revs, as soon as you get it revving above 7000rpm the thunder becomes a howl, and the Lightspeed picks up engine speed very fast – but also very smoothly.
It just catapults you forward in a totally controlled yet vivid way – but always with a sense of security.
Everything’s under control……
VERDICT
This Anglo-American hotrod has all the traditional reserves of bottom-end grunt and midrange torque that you expect from a twin-cylinder streetfighter, and then some. That muscular torque peaks at 8200rpm but builds all the way through the rev range to get there, allowing you to hold third gear for mile after mile of twisty road.
The surprisingly light-action clutch that has to cope with transmitting all that poke to the tarmac means there’s no risk of cramping up your left hand when riding in traffic. The degree of slip has been dialled in just right, too, with some residual engine braking to help take advantage of the V-twin’s meaty pistons in slowing without chattering the rear wheel on the overrun, while still remaining stable on the brakes.
The gearchange was a little stiff, but with less than 100 miles on this brand-new bike, it probably just needed some time to loosen up; all the various other bikes I’ve previously ridden with this engine had a crisp, sharp shift action. Anyway, gear-changing is something of an optional extra with all that torque!
The brief time I spent aboard the Langen Lightspeed left me hungry for more, once all the tidying up necessary for series production has taken place, including the fine-tuning of the electronics package. But whereas the Langen Two Stroke was a slightly quaint anomaly right out of left field in modern times, its Lightspeed successor is a very serious motorcycle that’s competing against the best available from far larger manufacturers, with much greater resources.
But sometimes, just occasionally, the little guy triumphs. Might this be one of those instances? Let’s wait and see…
✅ PROS – Monumental Buell V-twin that’s torque-rich, smooth and thrilling; agile, confidence-inspiring handling; bespoke, hand-built feel with real emotional pull.
❌ CONS – Exhaust clearance limits cornering, minimal wind protection for high-speed touring, style-first mirrors and likely noise compliance tweaks needed.
FROM SHED TO SHOWSTOPPER
FOR LANGEN Motorcycles founder Chris Ratcliffe, building motorcycles was never a mid-life swerve – it was preordained. Raised in a household where bikes were a way of life, Ratcliffe grew up surrounded by two wheels. His mother rode from the age of 17 and worked as a dispatch rider in Manchester, while his father apprenticed at Cotton Motorcycles before moving through Armstrong and eventually CCM. “That was my social life as a kid, then when I was 16 this old, knackered Honda CB100 turned up on a trailer on our drive, and I learnt the hard way about building bikes from the ground up with that. I’ve got a lot to thank my parents for!”
After qualifying as an Automotive Design Engineer at Huddersfield University, Ratcliffe cut his teeth at TVR Cars, then spent five years in the oil and gas industry working on heavy engineering offshore. But motorcycles never left his mind. In 2010, a design engineer role opened up at CCM in Bolton. Ratcliffe walked in as the fifth employee – and stayed nine years.
His most significant contribution came in late 2016 with the CCM Spitfire. Designed over the Christmas break and rushed to meet a show deadline, the bike sold all 150 units within days of its launch and transformed the company. Multiple derivatives followed, totalling several thousand bikes. “Finally CCM had got to the stage I’d wanted it to be at, so it was nice to have left some sort of legacy there.”
But by 2018, Ratcliffe wanted more. With a young family and a supportive wife, he made the leap: sold the house, ditched the car, left secure employment and founded Langen Motorcycles. Contract engineering paid the bills while a plan took shape around Vincenzo Mattia’s Vins 250cc two-stroke engine. An attempt to revive the Cotton name fell through, so Ratcliffe used his own nickname instead. “We decided to call it the Langen, which is my own personal nickname that people call me
by – don’t ask, it’s a long story!”
The result was the Langen Two Stroke – a hand-built, ultra-lightweight, road-legal performance bike that blended modern engineering with classic British cues. Covid chaos and soaring aluminium prices nearly derailed the project: “We had a first year of challenges and supply chain problems, but I’ve got a great team working here and we’re a resilient bunch – we always find a way to get over the next hurdle, and keep growing.”
Those bikes became Langen’s launch pad – but not its future template. Ratcliffe had no interest in repeating past formulas. Instead, he set out to create something entirely new. “It’s what a Langen should be: hand-made, performance oriented and completely individual. And with just 185 being made, absolutely exclusive, too…”
SPECIFICATIONS
ENGINE
Liquid-cooled DOHC 72° V-twin dry sump four-stroke with four valves per cylinder and chain drive to inlet camshaft, thence gear drive to exhaust cams
Bore & stroke 106mm x 67.5mm
Capacity 1191cc
Compression ratio 13.4:1
Transmission 6-speed with chain final drive and multiplate hydraulic oil-bath slipper clutch
PERFORMANCE
Power 138kW (185hp) at 10,600rpm (claimed, at crankshaft)
Torque 137.8Nm at 8200rpm (claimed)
ELECTRONICS
Fuel/ignition Electronic fuel injection and engine management system, with Mectronik ECU, Langen software and 2 x 60mm Bosch throttle bodies, each with twin injectors, one top spray + one side entry below butterfly
CHASSIS
TiG-welded laser-cut high-tensile tubular steel spaceframe
SUSPENSION
Front Fully adjustable 48mm Öhlins FGRT 301 inverted telescopic fork with 120mm travel
Rear High-tensile tubular steel swingarm pivoting in engine crankcases, and 2 x fully adjustable Öhlins STX pressurised gas shocks with 120mm travel
DIMENSIONS
Head angle/trail/wheelbase 26°/110mm/1540mm
Weight/distribution 185kg dry, split 52/48% static
Seat height 790mm
Fuel capacity 19L
WHEELS & BRAKES
Front brake Twin 320mm EBC steel discs with HEL Performance four-piston radial monobloc calipers with switchable dual-channel Continental Cornering ABS
Rear brake Single 265mm EBC steel disc with HEL Performance two-piston monobloc caliper and switchable dual-channel Continental Cornering ABS
Front wheel 120/70-17 Pirelli Diablo Rosso III on 3.50in. Langen CNC machined forged aluminium wheel
Rear wheel 240/45-17 Pirelli Diablo Rosso III on 6.00in. Langen CNC machined forged aluminium wheel
BUSINESS END
Price: £44,400 in UK including 20% tax (£37k tax free for export), with a £1k deposit payable to secure a numbered build slot.
Contact: langenmotorcycles.co.uk
