AN ICON, TAKEN FURTHER

Few engineers can claim to have shaped the sound of an era. Wolfgang Nehse is one of them. His work carried BMW Motorsport to victory at Le Mans, Spa, the Nürburgring and the Rallye Paris-Dakar. From the BMW S14, S50 and S54, powering the M3s from the E30 to the E46 CSL, to the twelve-cylinder S70/2 at the heart of the McLaren F1, his hand shaped a generation of award-winning, naturally aspirated engines. Then he turned to a different challenge. Leading engine development at BMW Motorrad, Nehse set out to bring the air-cooled engine to a new performance level, applying everything motorsport had taught him.

The proof came with the air-cooled BMW HP2 Sport engine. Born from Paris-Dakar experience, it remains, to this day, the most powerful air-cooled, high-revving four-valve boxer motorcycle engine ever built, reaching a specific output on par with the contemporary Porsche 997 GT3 generation.

On a motorcycle, each cylinder stands free in the airstream. In a flat six, three cylinders sit in line, hidden in the rear of the car, and no conventional casting could cool all four valves and their seat rings to survive endurance testing. For thirty years, the four-valve air-cooled flat six remained a dream.

Additive manufacturing changed everything. Geometries no foundry could ever produce - internal cooling channels routed precisely where the heat is, can now be printed in metal. Fluid dynamic were designed around one singular goal: the world's first truly durable, high-performance air-cooled four-valve flat six. Proven under endurance racing conditions*, its cooling capacity exceeds anything ever achieved in an air- and oil-cooled engine. Thirty years later, a dream has come true. This is reengineering. It is the dream of the ultimate air-cooled engine, finally fulfilled. *(TESTED FOR 24 HOURS UNDER ENDURANCE RACING CONDITIONS. The full load profile of Spa-Francorchamps, recreated on the Bovensiepen Engineering dyno.)

Tony Hatter spent 34 remarkable years at Porsche, shaping the silhouettes that came to define the marque. His hand touched the last air-cooled 911, a Le Mans-winning race car, and one of the most revered supercars ever built.

At a time when clay modelling was still the industry standard, Hatter was among the first to utilize CAS - computer-aided styling. This design process revolution spread through the studio, and he soon contributed digital work for the racing departments too. He proved that artistry and technology need not be opposites - that together, they could define a new era of design.

For REEN, Hatter applied these advanced design tools to bring his concept into the modern age. The nucleus of this project, the revolutionary four-valve cylinder head, remains hidden deep within the engine. So Hatter chose to reflect that innovation through the exterior itself: subtle, restrained, yet highly functional solutions that quietly communicate the engineering beneath the surface, while preserving the integrity of the original chassis and its silhouette.