The Triumph Scrambler must be one of the hardest bikes to customize. Along with Moto Guzzi’s current V7 and the Kawasaki W800, it’s one of the few production machines that have a retro-slash-custom feel right from the start. This hasn’t deterred the Triumph Tridays team though. The Rumbler accentuates the Scrambler’s classic good looks, and cranks the performance up a notch. Read More »
The small German town of Zschopau is famous for its motorcycling heritage. It was home to DKW and MZ, marques whose luminosity has dimmed in recent decades. But there’s now a chance that Zschopau could return to its motorcycling glory days. This is a prototype from a new company called ZPmoto; it’s a vintage-styled enduro inspired by the 1960 MZ ES 250 Geländesport. Read More »
For someone who doesn’t like stock Vincents, Jeff Decker builds a mighty fine Black Lightning. He’s a sculptor as well as a bike builder, and his eye for a line is evident with this beautiful salt racer. As these exclusive Horst Roesler shots reveal, Decker has managed to make the Vincent look fast even when it’s standing still on the Bonneville salt flats. Read More »
Motorcycles can be capricious creatures. But there are a handful that are essentially bulletproof—simple machines that are simple to fix, and cheap to run. One of those is Suzuki’s venerable DR650, which has been around for at least twenty years. The stock bike is as ugly as a toad, but it’s not hard to see why it still sells. In the US you can ride one out of the showroom for less than $6,000, and you’ll be riding on a wave of torque from the big aircooled single. Read More »
Japanese motorcycle culture is full of little side streets and half-hidden diversions: it probably has more depth than anywhere else in the world. And when the Japanese get into something, they really get into it. The scale model motorcycle scene is typical: it’s huge over there, fuelled by giants such as Tamiya, and it has its own subcultures too.
One of them is the annual Modeler GP show, a competition for scale models of racing motorcycles. The standard of work is absolutely jaw dropping, and when I first stumbled across a page on the Modeler GP website, it was a full minute before I realized I was looking at a scale model of a bike rather than the real thing. Read More »
If there’s a surefire way to improve the looks of the average motorcycle, it’s by tidying up the back end. And this Bonneville, from the Argentinian builder CMP Project, is a textbook example. Careful fabrication and a custom-fitted seat have given Triumph’s mainstay roadster a new stance and a new look—one that’s retro and purposeful in equal measure.
Parts are hard to come by in Argentina—indeed, fuel is often hard to come by in the second largest country in South America. But CMP Project’s Federico Lozada and German Karp have done an excellent job despite the difficulties. Read More »
Words by Gary Inman, photography by Paul Bryant. There’s a phrase, very popular in England, “You can’t polish a turd”. But, taking on their first project bike, Sideburn magazine tried.
The starting point was a £370 ($600) Honda FT500C, and the magazine didn’t want to spend a lot on it. Luckily, they had Carl of CFM in Lincolnshire, England, on their side. He’s a local one-man do-it-all bike builder/fabricator, and he sorted the bike out. Read More »
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