BMW Motorrad Nederland Creates CE-04 100 Years Edition Scooter

As we closed the book on 2022, BMW officially unveiled two limited edition bikes to celebrate 100 years of BMW Motorrad. Since 2023 marks the brand’s 100th anniversary, it released both the R nineT and R 18 100 Years Editions. Just 1,923 of each of these bikes would be made, the OEM said, and the careful styling that draws a direct line all the way back to the R 32 couldn’t be denied.  

Now, BMW Motorrad Nederland has taken the BMW legacy into the future with its own custom 100 Years Edition creation. Friends, this is the CE-04 100 Years Edition—and only one of them will ever be made. While it, too, draws styling cues from the R 32, it pushes that styling in a new direction, as BMW and other legacy bike makers stand on the edge of a significant shift in technology and personal mobility. 

The CE-04 100 Years Edition is, of course, pretty much just a styling exercise. One thing that BMW sought to make clear when it initially introduced the CE-04 was just how easily riders could change the look of this electric scoot to suit their own personal style and preferences. The CE-04 100 Years Edition is nothing if not a tactile example of that fact. 

Sporting the elegant white pinstriping familiar from those early BMW Motorrad bikes, it also gets a special saddle with 100 Years embroidery at the back. The original BMW logo rather than the new one is also a nod to the company’s past, which is simultaneously riding on the most current representation of BMW’s two-wheeled future here in 2023. 

Now, clearly, no one is going to mistake the CE-04 100 Years Edition for a classic BMW—but that’s not the point. In a way, this composition seems to say “we’ve been here for 100 years, and we’ll be here for 100 more.” Like any art, it’s open to interpretation, and is not intended as a statement of fact.  

Sure, you might say, the CE-04 wasn’t around in 1923. Then again, neither was the R 18 or the R nineT, so why not push the 100 Years idea into even newer territory with an electric scooter?