Culture Behind Garage Doors: Paul Brauchart and Philipp Rabl of Vagabund MotoThis series highlights the talented hands that turn wrenches on transformative machines.

Paul Brauchart and Philipp Rabl of Vagabund Moto

Paul Brauchart and Philipp Rabl started out in the basement of Rabl’s family home with nothing more than his father’s tools and some big ideas. The two grew up around motorcycles and were always drawing, designing, and building everything, from furniture to bicycles. In 2015, they started Vagabund as a side project, with a keen eye toward building the best motorcycles for their clients and creating great content around each bike. Before long, the company became a full-time project for the pair.

They received mainstream attention after releasing the VO3 BMW R100R, which blends elements of a scrambler and café racer with contemporary styling cues. Their combined strengths of design and engineering shine through in every aspect of the bike, as well as their “never stop inventing and trying new stuff” attitude. Now they find themselves moving into a new workshop, which Brauchart says “will be a huge and crazy place for us, including a big daylight studio where we are creating with our friend and main photographer Stefan Leitner. We’re focused not only on motorcycles as we continue to push ourselves. We live in a throwaway society, so we feel it’s really important to create things with emotion and meaning attached. That’s what we’re trying to achieve with all of our products.”