Some of the words that came out of my brainstorming were: 

• Antique
• Secure
• European
• Multifunctional
• Clean
• Industrial
• Relaxed
• Classic
• Luxury
• Minimal

I knew that I wanted to use aubergine/eggplant and a leather color or a beige with either an orange or a green. Then I opened the palette worksheet and saw that the example used dark purple. 

I went back and did a bit more idea generating and decided to play with the colors of the raw materials of all the bikes. Leather, metal, rubber, etc. I jumped into Kuler and came away with this: 

 I needed more contrast so I made a few adjustments:

I checked that my main colors (the middle three) had enough contrast in greyscale: 

Then I flushed them out. 

I was surprised at how similar all the colors the competitors use are. I travel alot and the sites I tend to use also employ the primary blue, red, and yellow colors. So I chose to keep the metal color I first envisioned as a gun metal grey in the blue family to add that travel feel. 

I would use the darker blue as the third main color, and use the brown sparingly as an accent. 

The brief talks about the target audience being predominantly artists and designers who appreciate attention to detail. I think the juxtaposition of the two more saturated blues adds a bit of detail. 

I decided to pursue the aubergine dream despite the example being so similar.