Engineers first.
Langen was founded in 2018 to build the motorcycles its founder couldn't buy: light, mechanical, hand-made, and engineered around the rider rather than the showroom.
The story so far.
Christofer Ratcliffe was Chief Design Engineer at CCM when he began drawing an ultra-lightweight road motorcycle unlike anything on sale. In 2019 a partnership with Vincenzo Mattia's Vins Motors in Maranello gave it an engine, and Langen Motorcycles was born.
The Two Stroke followed – one hundred built, every one sold, ridden on three continents and reviewed as a benchmark for handling. The team grew with it: engineers and designers from CCM, Triumph, BAC, McLaren and M-Sport, each with a reason to question how things are usually done.
The Lightspeed, revealed at Gunhill Studios in November 2025, is the second model: 185 horsepower, 185 kilograms, 185 builds, with Langen's own electronics and the highest UK manufacturing content of any motorcycle maker. The LS12 Turbo – twelve of them – comes next.
I spent the first part of my career designing motorcycles for other people's badges. The brief was always the same: a bike for everyone, which is to say a bike for no one in particular. Langen began as the opposite idea – that a motorcycle could be made for one rider, by people who would know that rider by name, and that it should be light enough and alive enough to make a Tuesday evening feel like a holiday.
We are a small company in Wigan. We keep it that way on purpose. Every bike we build goes through the same hands, and every owner has my number. If you commission one, you will spend a day with us before anything is cut, and you will know exactly who made it and why each part is the way it is.
Everything on a Langen is there because it has to be. Nothing is there because the brochure needed it.
Everything is there for a reason.
Design
Every component is drawn by us and judged on weight, function and how it looks in the hand. If a part can't be made better, it isn't on the bike.
Engineering
Chassis analysed in our own FEA tools, electronics and rider aids written in house, materials chosen for what they do rather than what they cost.
Testing
Dyno, road and track before anything is signed off – procedures in line with the large OEMs, with the attention that comes from building slowly, by hand.
Making
Chassis welded and bodywork laid up by local partners who make for Formula 1 and aerospace. Billet parts machined minutes from the factory door.
Commissioning
Each bike built to its owner's fit and specification, with the design team, in person. No two alike.
Looking after it
Owners deal with the factory directly. The engineers who built the bike are the ones who maintain it.
Highly Commended, Small Business of the Year.
“The judges were particularly impressed by the ambition behind Langen Motorcycles and its determination to compete at the very highest level despite operating with a relatively small team… demonstrating that you don't have to be the biggest to compete on a global stage.”
Next to a racetrack, on purpose.
Kingfisher Court, Wigan – beside the Three Sisters circuit, twenty minutes from Manchester, in the part of England that built the first machines. The local mantra is one we have adopted: we do things differently here.
Visits are by appointment and always welcome. Owners, prospective owners and anyone who wants to see a motorcycle built by hand.
“…excellent power-to-weight ratio, and the benchmark handling of its sweet-steering chassis. Langen Motorcycles’ debut model has hit the bullseye.”
“Build quality is spectacular… the whole package is a triumph of handling prowess.”
“In the flesh it is just stunning.”
“The way it rides is incredible.”
Come and see for yourself
The best way to understand a Langen is to stand next to one. Tell us when suits and we'll put the kettle on.
Prefer a document? Request the Lightspeed brochure (PDF)
Unit 1, Kingfisher Court, South Lancs Industrial Estate
Wigan, Greater Manchester WN4 9DW
United Kingdom
Visits to the workshop are by appointment.