The Ural Tourist is a Russian sidecar rig that many of you are familiar with, nothing fancy, but an interesting, durable and fun ride if you like sidecars. Svetlana Zyryanova works in the Ural paint department and, among other things, applies camouflage paint spots to Urals heading out of the factory for sale around the world.
In her spare time, Svetlana’s an artist and some folks might not appreciate the skill of a factory painter. She decided to take on a project of painting a Ural Tourist in the Gzhel tradition, a 14th century Russian pottery style also found on blue-patterned fine porcelain. It’s a way to show off some of the talent of the folks that build these bikes. She chose her own paint, created the design and transformed this Ural on her own time. This is definitely not camouflage!
While this Ural may look like fine porcelain, the paint is clear coated and perfectly able to be shown off as the owner rides down the road. They’ve put it up for sale on eBay and Ural will deliver the bike to the dealer closest to the winning bidder. Also, the factory will donate 10% of the proceeds from the sale of Ural Gzhel to the Irbit Children School of Arts to support the local arts program in Irbit.
Some Urals are purchased for the express purpose of heading off road, I have to think this one may not see very many fire trails.
Link: auction has ended
todd says
I can see this going over well as a factory option, regardless of price. It’s great to see the “hand” of an actual person involved in things that you buy, they instantly become precious. Bikes used to come with hand painted pin striping. Now it’s probably done by a machine at most places.
-todd
Tin Man 2 says
The Artist sure put alot of work into that Paint, Beautyfull in its own way. I wonder how many hours went into the job? I like the Camo look on this bike style but have to respect the talent the artist put into this one. The Enfield bikes are hand striped and the Harley Custom series are done by hand also, but nothing this labor intensive.
Den says
I saw this bike on the retrothing site a little while ago, it could definitely be a good side project for the factory as well as the artist herself. Also BMW offers hand painted pin striping, it looks great on the black tank of the R 1200r!
I have viewed shots on the ‘Enfield and BMW web-sites showing the craftspeople doing pin-striping work in their respective factories. It is interesting to see, so different yet so similar.
WRXr says
Now this is a custom paint job I can appreciate! So much more unique than the typical “flames, skulls and pin-ups.”.
Hawk says
Beautiful, but it makes you cry when you stuff it ….
Bazuzeus says
wow ! A motorcycle that looks just like my mother in law’s lavatories…
blaine newell says
Hi there. I’m a single guy. I bet this rig would be great, to get woman to want to take a ride. Blaine