£186,000 Midual Type 1 Series 3 destined for investment collectors
A €186k French masterpiece that proves you really can pay supercar money for a motorcycle that prefers a polishing cloth to performance figures.
French luxury motorcycle maker Midual doesn’t do things by halves, or quickly, it seems. It’s been a decade since the brand last graced the motorcycling world with something that wasn’t a polished aluminium fever dream.
Now, the boutique manufacturer from Anjou has returned with the Type 1 Series 3, a machine that promises artisanal splendour, mechanical purity… and performance figures that politely decline to justify the six-figure asking price.
First up, it costs €186,200 or around £165,000 at today’s exchange rate. Yes, that’s the price of a superbike, a grand tourer, and a deposit on a small chateau somewhere in Brittany. But this is Midual, where motorcycling is less a sport and more a very expensive art installation that just happens to have wheels and an engine.
The new Series 3 continues the brand’s tradition of building bikes that look like they’ve fallen out of an haute horlogerie catalogue and landed in a gallery. Think of it more like an objet d’art, than a form of transportation.
The Midual Type 1 Series 3 - for the few, not the many!
The polished aluminium monocoque, still the party piece, serves as the frame, the bodywork, and the fuel tank all in one. It’s a single, meticulously hand-sculpted unit that apparently takes hundreds of hours to create, partly justifying the pricetag. It’s undeniably impressive craftsmanship. But then again, it should be at €186k, you could employ someone to follow you around with a polishing cloth full-time.
Earlier this year, Midual showed off the Quintessence, which we also covered here on Visordown.com. That bike was a fully polished, ultra-exclusive interpretation of its Type 1. Limited to three units and offered at a gentle €300,000, it sold out almost instantly. Because of course it did. And that’s kind of the point. I’m poking fun at the price versus performance side of things, but Midual isn’t alone in the sector. Take its compatriots, Brough Superior Motorcycles, which is based down the road from the Midual factory. It also makes uber-exclusive, expensive bikes, which, with the exception of the AMB01 and RM01, have performance figures which would be eclipsed by a £15,000 middleweight naked from Japan. And Brough still sells out every new bike it creates.
The Series 3 follows that same trajectory—limited numbers (20 units this time), lavish build, and the sort of finish that makes even top-end custom builders say ‘merde’.
Every line, every curve, every hand-painted pinstripe is crafted with the precision of jewellery. The famous one-piece solid aluminium seat, known as a “tapecul” (please don’t Google Translate that), returns, presumably because even in luxury motorcycling, the French never miss an opportunity to name something after a sore backside.
Underneath all this shimmering metalwork is Midual’s unique 1,036cc longitudinal flat-twin, canted at 25 degrees. It’s claimed to be smooth, torquey, and refined, much like every press release ever written about an engine whose spec sheet you’re not supposed to question too closely.
Is it fast? Midual doesn’t say. And perhaps wisely so: because while the craftsmanship is exotic, the performance is more ‘continental touring at a brisk trot’ than ‘slap on your leathers and thrash it’. But then again, nobody buying one of these is planning to go fishing for sports bikes.
Everything is crafted in Juigné-sur-Loire, deep in the heart of Anjou. Founder Olivier Midy and his small team machine, sculpt, polish, and assemble every component in-house. Raw French aluminium becomes a gleaming sculpture, and each bike is ridden 300km before delivery – presumably to ensure it remains intact during the strenuous ride from the château driveway to the private museum where it will spend the rest of its life.
Midual insists the Series 3 is a proper road machine, and the brand’s track record backs that up. Ultimately, though, this is a luxury object for connoisseurs – people who choose motorcycles not for horsepower, but for hand-finished bolts and a monocoque chassis that costs more per kilo than the finest foie gras.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
