This beautiful creation was built by an Italian shop based in Rome called Emporio Elaborazioni (EE). It was started by a graphic designer, a mechanic and a silversmith who all shared a love of custom motorcycles. This brutal bike is nicknamed the ‘Mastino’ or Mastiff after the breed of large, powerful and rather stocky pedigree dogs. When you look at the stance of this short, mean and muscular café racer you realise the name couldn’t be more fitting if it tried. We always thought the powerful and naked XJR 1200 would be a great contender for a modern café racer, but we had no idea it could look this good – trust the Italians to teach us a lesson in style. Here’s how Andrea from EE describes their project:
“It’s the shortest bike we have made. We first worked to heavily reduce the weight by removing everything that we didn’t need. To improve performances we reworked the engine and the carburetors, removed the air box, added forks with Hyperpro kit, Ohlins for the back, and four in one Vance & Hanes with a final Megaton… plus a lot of other stuff. We rebuilt the back frame and made support for the plate and turning lights.
As for the design, our idea was a vintage clean powerful but not obvious cafè. So we started to image solutions… as the 13 wrench used to fix tank and seat. We make a small place under the seat for a whisky bottle and decide to paint the Mastino with not classic “racing” colors. To complete the look and feel we added the little graphic details on the tank… more or less the thing every biker says (F#*!) when the bike stops from an empty tank!”
The stunning tank is off a Ducati Imola and brings a large slice of Italy to the build. The seat is a classic Norton Manx number which sits snug under the tank. This XJR 1200 is a truly unique build and you can definitely see how each of their skills have been utilized. With a custom made silver hip flask built into the seat you could almost call this bike a Scotch Rocket. Not sure how the Italian Polizia would feel about that modification but in Australia it would go down as well as a cheap bottle of Tequila.
