Some custom motorcycles are built around an engine.
Others start with a frame, a wheel, or a particular design language. The BOX39 Giotto Altre ‘Atomic Heart’ began somewhere more unusual: inside a video game.
Built in Dubai by BOX39, this limited-edition custom motorcycle takes the Giotto Altre platform and turns it into a two-wheeled interpretation of Atomic Heart, the retro-futurist action RPG from Mundfish.
Only seven examples will be made.
At its core is a Milwaukee-Eight 117 producing 1,923 cc and 172 Nm of torque. But the engine is almost secondary to the extraordinary amount of work invested in the chassis, wheels and bodywork.
From the screen to the street
The Giotto Altre motorcycle appears in Atomic Heart’s final expansion, Enchantment Under the Sea. In the game’s story, the motorcycle belongs to the captain of a submarine carrying passengers and valuable possessions to the secret Khrustal project.
The protagonist, Major P-3, gets a close look at the machine and calls it a formidable beast. His assistant, Nastya Nazarova, is even more enthusiastic, comparing its shape to a dolphin.
For BOX39, that fictional motorcycle became the starting point for a very real machine.
The brief was not simply to reproduce a video-game prop. Instead, the designers treated the motorcycle as a three-dimensional portrait of the game’s Twins, translating their textures, shapes and visual language into metal, carbon fibre and machined aluminium.
The result is suitably strange.
A custom motorcycle with a solid wheel obsession
The wheels are arguably the Giotto Altre’s most distinctive feature.
Rather than conventional spokes, BOX39 uses solid, sculpted wheels whose surfaces are covered with intricate CNC-machined textures. They are almost architectural in appearance, and they do much of the visual heavy lifting.
The rear wheel measures a massive 18 x 10 inches and carries a 280-section rear tyre. Up front is a 21 x 3.25-inch wheel with a 130-section tyre.
According to BOX39, hundreds of hours of CNC machining went into creating the wheel textures alone.
And then there is the detail that sounds almost too extravagant to be true: a decorative braid finished in 24-karat gold.
It is the sort of component that could be displayed as sculpture even without the motorcycle around it.
Carbon fibre, ageing and alternative Soviet futurism
The Giotto Altre’s bodywork is made from carbon fibre, but BOX39 deliberately avoided making it look pristine.
The surface was hand-finished and artistically aged, giving the carbon a worn, almost industrial character. Decorative inserts repeat the textures found on the wheels, tying the separate components together.
That combination of high-tech materials and deliberate ageing is central to the Atomic Heart aesthetic.
The fictional world of the game imagines an alternative Soviet Union where technology has developed along a radically different path. BOX39’s motorcycle captures that idea without turning the machine into a simple replica.
It looks as though it belongs to another timeline.
A serious chassis underneath the theatrics
For all the visual drama, the Giotto Altre is still intended to function as a motorcycle.
BOX39 built the project around its own steel frame, paired with a single-sided swingarm and rear air suspension. Up front sits an Öhlins fork, while braking hardware comes from Galfer, with Hell calipers front and rear.
The engine is Harley-Davidson’s Milwaukee-Eight 117, displacing 1,923 cc and producing 172 Nm of torque. A six-speed gearbox sends that output to the rear wheel.
The 17-litre fuel tank and claimed fuel consumption of 5.5 l/100 km suggest that, despite its cinematic appearance, this is not merely a living-room sculpture.
It can be ridden.
The details are the point
Rizoma supplies the mirrors and grips, while the exhaust comes from Jekill & Hyde. A high-flow air filter completes the intake setup.
But the interesting part of the Giotto Altre is not the parts catalogue. It is the way those components disappear into a much larger design.
Every surface has been considered.
The wheels, carbon bodywork, gold detailing and aged finishes all serve the same purpose: making the motorcycle feel like an object that has escaped from the Atomic Heart universe.
At 310 kg, it is a substantial machine. Yet the enormous rear tyre, low-slung proportions and solid wheels give it the stance of something much heavier than a conventional custom.
And that may be the cleverest thing about it.
Seven motorcycles, one fictional legend
The BOX39 Giotto Altre ‘Atomic Heart’ is limited to just seven motorcycles, making it less a production custom and more a collectible interpretation of a fictional machine.
It also shows how far contemporary custom motorcycle design has moved from the traditional formula of chrome, spokes and hand-built tanks.
