Not to crash the party on the custom motorbike crowd, but I’ve
never been a huge fan of Café Racer styling. Now before some of my readers
decide to run me out of town, allow me to emphasize that there’s nothing
particularly wrong with Cafés. I’m just a bit surprised that modern
builders and modders have latched on to the Café styling out of all the grand
history of motorcycle design.
That being said, I’ll admit there’s something really
striking about a good café racer—downswept handlebars, aluminum bodywork and
fenders, knife-edge tires leaning into the wind…
It’s hard to really hate anything that (at least in looks)
seems so relentlessly bent on neck-breaking speed.
Still, trends being what they are, it hasn’t taken long for designers
to reinvent the wheel ten times over and come up with some incredibly original,
and incredibly mad, Café Racer builds. Here’s a selection of the oddball bunch,
collected from around the net.
Take the racing bike aesthetic of a Café, crank it up a
notch, and you get this creation from Studio Motors. Specs list a number of Suzuki
parts in the forks and suspension, but the bodywork is all custom. Say what you
like about it, but it’s strikingly different from any stock Triumph Thruxton.
Initially launched as a kickstarter program, the Badger stands out from the crowd with it's unassuming "Rat Cafe" styling. Everything about this bike is an oddball, including the
name. Some have said they hate the styling… but to take a stock Royal Enfield
Bullet and modify it to go cross country and race? That takes real
gumption.
Where to even begin? Steampunk motorcycles have cropped up
on the net every now and then, but this is probably the best build I’ve seen in
a while. Everything about this bike has been modified, stripped off, ground-down,
or completely fabricated by hand. That gorgeous chesterfield café seat? Knott hand
crafted it after watching a couple tutorials on the web. The fuel lines were
bent into shape using a champagne bottle. Needless to say, ‘Isabel,’ as her
creator has named her, is a unique thing of beauty. You can see the whole build
unfold here
Hammarhead Industries, creators of the Jack Pine and equally
stellar Ural Solo X, seem to pride themselves on making highly practical,
functional utilitarian bikes. Which is why their less-publicisized Volta
seems so far out of left field. Replacing the Bullet’s 500 cc engine with a
hub-mounted EnerTrac electric motor, the Volta will
reportedly scream along at 75 MPH… which is about what a stock Enfield will do.
