Someone Stuck A Yamaha R6 Into The Back Of A BMW Isetta And Called It A Day

The BMW Isetta was an urban mobility solution from 1955. YouTuber Westen Champlin wanted to make this Isetta more powerful. How? He commissioned a Yamaha R6 to do the job. The finished product is fast, loud, and clearly a safety hazard.

The BMW Isetta was BMW’s “urban mobility solution” long before people needed urban mobility solutions. It debuted back in 1955, and was the first production car to have a fuel economy rating of 94 miles per gallon.

Clearly, this is cool for some people, like grandmas, geeks, and nerds—but it’s by no means badass.

But you know what is badass? Stuffing a high-revving, 100-plus horsepower engine from a Yamaha R6 into a BMW Isetta. Why? Well, why the hell not?

This is exactly what YouTuber Westen Champlin set out to do. And the best part is that he and his crew only had one day to do it, as they wanted to complete the build in time for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Naturally, coming up with a packaging solution for an R6 engine in the BMW Isetta would be quite the challenge. Out of the factory, it came equipped with a 300cc single-cylinder engine—about half the displacement and a quarter of the cylinders of the Yamaha R6’s engine.

And so Westen and his crew had to get creative. They purchased a rather good looking early year-model Yamaha R6, and tore it apart (which I honestly felt pretty bad about). But instead of just taking the bike’s engine and stuffing it into where the Isetta’s engine used to be, they decided to go for a different approach.