Tag: Design

The mid-sized street bike market is one of the hottest on the planet, and the Triumph Street Triple is near the top of the list. It’s light, makes great power, sounds awesome, and seems generally great to live with. Heck, even the Street Triple’s most divisive feature—its distinctive dual headlight design—has grown on us over the years. Not everyone is a fan of the styling though; you either love the Street Triple’s bug eyes, or you don’t. Junichi Nomura falls into the latter camp. After buying a stock standard 2010 Street Triple 675 from a friend, he spent a year giving the perky tri

Given how long the chopper scene has been around, builders are spoilt for choice when sourcing parts for their projects. But finding the right engine, frame, and running gear for a custom chopper is only half the struggle. You need to know exactly which parts to pick—and you need to know how to combine them to create a cohesive machine. Martin Becker at MB Cycles excels at this. The German custom bike builder is a matchmaker of sorts, combining bits from wildly different sources to create jaw-dropping V-twin performance choppers. He’s a master of stance, propor

The 1930s proved to be a golden era for V-twin-powered American motorcycles, and if you’re fortunate enough to own one, you’re sitting on a substantial pile of dough. Harley-Davidson’s 1936 EL Knucklehead is regarded by many as the single most desirable classic HD and the right Indian Four will net over $200,000 these days. But that’s relative chump change compared to a little-known marque named Crocker, as one of these precious V-Twins can be worth a half-million to the full seven figures. Founded in 1901 and 1903 respectively, Indian and Harley-Davidson enjoyed tenured dominance over any would-be newcomers to the American market. Still, Albert Crocker took the oppor

Few motorcycles can claim the notoriety of the ill-fated Buell Blast. Propelled by half a Sportster engine and aimed at beginner riders, the Blast was such a disappointment that its creator, Erik Buell, signaled the end of its production by publicly tossing one into a crusher. Then, to drive the point home, he offered a limited run of crushed and autographed Buell Blast ‘cubes’ for sale. The Buell Blast’s infamy—and rarity—are precisely what tempted Toshiyuki ‘Cheetah’ Osawa to customize it. Based in Tokyo, Japan, Osawa-san is the brains behind the ‘Have Fun’ flat track

Two-door convertible SUV. Words we don’t hear in the automotive world that often. When we arrived at bike night this summer to the typical rows of two-wheeled steeds, it was our friend Wookie’s 1972 Chevy K/5 Blazer taking up space that got our attention first. A topless 4×4 wrapped in iconic ’70s lines all hugging a 350 V8 struck us as the perfect idea: a summertime, beach-going, drive-in date movie-taker/baby-maker and backwoods overlander all in one. Of course, our friend had an even better ide

Earlier this month, the Pacifico Yokohama convention hall hosted the 32nd running of the mega-popular Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show. A whopping 24,000 visitors sashayed their way through the scores of custom bikes and cars during the one-day show, displaying a sort of organized hubbub typical of Japanese events. Among them were our friends Marc Holstein and Christine Gabler; a formidable German photography duo with a deep love for Japan and her culture. With an invite to the much quieter setup day, Marc and Christine captured the show’s most intriguing machines in vivid detail, before returning the next day to document the colorful whirlwind that is the

Headquartered in India, TVS Motor is one of the biggest motorcycle manufacturers that you may not have heard of. They sell a whopping three million units a year—which makes them the country’s third-largest marque—and they own Norton. Most notably, all of the motorcycles they produce have a capacity of 312.2 cc or less. Proving that small bikes are big fun, TVS makes models like the neo-retro TVS Ronin 225, the fully-faired TVS Apache RR 310, and the edgy TVS Apache RTR 310 naked. They also regularly work with custom workshops like Smoked Garage to show off the potential of their plucky st

You’re sure to face opposition calling something the first of its kind, but the consensus is that the BMW R80G/S invented the large-displacement dual-sport scene—a segment that flourishes today. The R80 and its successor the R100GS combined the best of BMW’s road-going features with increased suspension travel and the new ‘monolever’ swingarm in a form that excelled on any terrain, setting the stage for hundreds of thousands of dual-sport BMWs since. For all their timeless rugged charm, you wouldn’t call either bike stylish in a traditional sense, prompting a unique challenge for the craftsman at Stile Italiano.

On the first weekend of December each year, the Pacifico Yokohama convention center is filled to the brim with highly imaginative machines for the Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show. There’s a whole lot going on—from crazy engineering to retina-searing paint jobs. But one Japanese custom builder stands out for entirely different reasons. Shiro Nakajima, otherwise known as 46Works, wows year after year with his tastefully restrained racing-inspired customs. A trained engineer and former boss of the Japanese restomod powerhouse Ritmo Sereno, Na

Occasionally you get the call. You spend all your free time in your backyard or garage, mostly for the love of it, and then one of the big guys notices what you’ve been up to. Harley-Davidson Australia noticed Nigel Petrie. They called to ask him to have some fun on their dime, and that he did. Nigel is the mind behind Engineered To Slide, a custom auto and motorcycle garage from Down Under. He’s been headdown and neck-deep in projects of all sorts since 2010. As a builder, Nigel is always challenging himself from one project to the next, whether it’s a drifting Toyota pickup, a landspeed KTM, or this Harley-Davidson hillclimber.