Can Krugger’s one-off FNK motorcycle bring a 1927 Liège engine back to life?
Liège-based designer Fred Krugger and FN Herstal have joined forces to build the FNK, a unique motorcycle around an original Belgian FN 500 engine manufactured in 1927, with completion planned for mid-2027.
In 30 seconds
- The FNK is built around an original 1927 FN 500 overhead-valve engine.
- Krugger is designing and manufacturing the complete one-off motorcycle.
- FN Herstal is providing archives, technical documentation and specialist expertise.
- The work in progress appeared in Bastogne on 8 and 9 August 2026.
-based motorcycle designer Fred Bertrand, better known as Krugger, and FN have joined forces to build the FNK, a one-off machine around an original FN 500 engine manufactured in 1927. The unfinished motorcycle was presented during the Circuit des Ardennes commemoration in on 8 and 9 August, and FN Herstal says the completed machine is due in mid-2027, exactly a century after the engine was made.
For people in Belgium, the significance lies less in the revival of an old engine than in the combination of skills behind it. Krugger is designing and manufacturing the motorcycle at his workshop in Basse-Bodeux, in Liège province. FN Herstal, based in Herstal, is opening its historical archives and technical documentation while contributing internal expertise, including the work of its engravers. The Ars Mechanica Foundation is helping connect the project with the region’s mechanical heritage.
The partnership also clarifies what the FNK is not. FN Herstal explicitly describes it as a heritage and artistic project, not a return to motorcycle production. The company is now internationally associated primarily with defence manufacturing, but motorcycles formed an important part of its earlier industrial identity. In the FNK, that past is being treated as a source of design knowledge rather than as the basis of a revived commercial range.
Krugger’s perspective begins with the object itself. The Royal Automobile Club de Spa, which organised the Bastogne commemoration, quoted him describing the privately commissioned motorcycle as a reference to the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne language of the early 1930s: long horizontal lines, rounded forms and an aesthetic shaped by ideas of speed and aerodynamics. He chose the 1927 overhead-valve FN 500 because, in his account, a motorcycle conceived around Belgian craftsmanship required a Belgian mechanical heart.
FN Herstal places the emphasis differently. Its public presentation describes the FNK as a way to illuminate a chapter of the company’s industrial history and showcase mechanical, design and manufacturing abilities that remain rooted in the Liège area. That institutional heritage framing sits alongside Krugger’s more personal conception of the motorcycle as a functional work of art made for a private client who granted him creative freedom.
The broader story reaches beyond nostalgia. An official Province of Liège exhibition dossier identifies Krugger as an internationally recognised Walloon creator whose hand-built motorcycles won the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building in 2010 and 2014. The same dossier places him within a wider Liège motorcycle tradition that includes FN, Saroléa and generations of specialist metalworkers. His work turns that industrial memory into something contemporary without pretending that bespoke construction can recreate the region’s former mass-manufacturing economy.
Where this is happening
View on map Liège →The FNK therefore occupies an unusual middle ground: it is simultaneously a private commission, a working mechanical object and an exercise in public industrial memory. Motorcycle enthusiasts may judge it by its engineering and proportions; heritage institutions will see a vehicle for transmitting technical knowledge; FN Herstal gains a carefully bounded connection to an earlier part of its identity.
Important details remain undisclosed. The client has not been publicly identified in the reviewed sources, nor have the project’s cost, final technical specifications, intended road-registration status or post-completion exhibition programme been confirmed. The immediate milestone is the planned unveiling of the finished motorcycle in mid-2027. Until then, the central question is whether Krugger can make a century-old Liège engine function as the heart of a coherent new machine, rather than merely as a museum piece.
What to do
There is no motorcycle to order and no announced consumer cost: the FNK is a unique build, not the start of an FN product range. The public work-in-progress appearance in Bastogne took place on 8 and 9 August 2026, so readers interested in seeing the finished machine should watch for project or exhibition announcements around the planned mid-2027 completion. Collectors should not interpret the collaboration as an FN motorcycle-market relaunch. For heritage visitors, the relevant locations connected with the story are Basse-Bodeux, where Krugger works, and Herstal, whose industrial archives and expertise support the build.
Impact
Regional — The FNK gives Liège province’s motorcycle and metalworking heritage national visibility while highlighting active workshops and specialist crafts in Basse-Bodeux and Herstal.
EvidenceWell established · 2 primary sources + 3 official documents + 1 independent reporting sourceExplore evidence →Hide evidence ↑
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Voices & reactions
What the main actors are doing
Reported positions, summarised — not direct quotationsKrugger’s creator-led perspective
Fred Krugger presents the FNK chiefly as a private artistic and engineering commission. His emphasis is on creative freedom, a Belgian mechanical heart and the rounded, aerodynamic language of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne.
FN Herstal’s institutional perspective
FN Herstal frames the same machine as a bounded heritage project that showcases company archives, engraving and Liège manufacturing knowledge. It expressly rejects the possible interpretation that the FNK signals a commercial return to motorcycles.
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This story was assembled from verified evidence, with its sources and reasoning recorded as it was written.