I know all about this bike and its owner.
The owner, Mick Etienne, is a fellow Jerseyman and a lifelong biker that I've known since a kid. He is a bit "eccentric"
He is an airbrush artist and has created some amazing art work from bikes to large scenery for theatres. I watched him paint a large scene on a wall once by projecting a picture onto the wall and spraying in the colours like a painting by numbers. He is a very talented guy.
Bike riding. He is a very, very good rider. Years ago he used to own a Kawasaki Z1300. He was able to pull out on to the coast road in Jersey and hook it on to the back wheel and change up through all the gears into top whilst the bike was vertical.
This HP2 bike always brings very painful memories to me. The Jersey BMW dealers were primary car dealers who didn't really want anything to do with bikes but only took on the dealership to stop anyone else from having it. They knew nothing whatsoever about bikes. BMW UK would just send them whatever bikes and bits they wanted to get rid of. They had the HP2 in their showroom for ages. I went in with the money to buy it when most of the UK dealers were offering ex-demo bikes for around £9,000 to £10,000 but the Jersey dealer wanted the full UK price including the VAT (Jersey is VAT free). They refused to knock a penny off the price as discounting was a very dirty word to them and they always had enough rich idiots in Jersey who would pay full price for anything.
I offered them £9,000 on the spot to take it away for them after it had sat there for over a year gathering dust in the showroom. They told me to go away.
A new owner then took over the garage and took a totally different approach that all stock must have a 90 day life. They suddenly dropped the price to £7,500 including the set of MM wheels.
Mick heard about this before me (for which I will always hate him
). He turned up and offered them £6,500 and they took it!
Even though the stupid twats still had my details and my offer of £9,000. Fucking idiots.
I tried to buy it from Mick via another friend but was advised it was definitely not for sale.
Mick then decided on the "interesting" paint job, which I hadn't seen until that photo above but my other friend did tell me "you wouldn't want it now". The "flying bananas" is a Jersey joke. The Tourism dept paid some advertising company a fortunate to come up with a logo for Jersey and the end result was a pathetic yellow squiggle that looked like a flying banana.
I would still love a HP2 enduro but things just seem to conspire against me owning one.
