As any pimply teenager with too many hours on their gaming console will tell you, a ‘rōnin’ samurai is an ancient Japanese swordsman without a lord or master. Mythologised to a crazy extent, them and their ilk have become common naming fodder for moto manufacturers and customisers alike. Meet Smoked Garage’s tilt at the legend…

Last night we had a bike builder that had reverted to a classic, or standard, look for his build. A little tired of all the cafes, scramblers and trackers, he’d wiped the slate clean and started from scratch. Well, Lionel from France’s Duke Motorcycles found himself with a similar challenge, but his solution was quite different…

The team at Republica Motocicletas don’t struggle to find business. The Argentinian workshop has belted out over 30 motorcycles in their short time on the scene and they can’t keep up with the amount of orders coming in. Why? Well, it’s because they create rides like this, a killer 2013 Honda Tornado 250 dubbed the ‘Bypass’…

Being the custom bike freaks that we all are, it’s easy to forget that it’s not always about the bike. Sometimes it’s that perfect combination of bike, landscape, and weather that just comes together to make those bucket list moments you’ll be smiling about in your final hours….

When Honda released the latest incarnation of the Honda Rebel it was clear they wanted the custom scene to jump on board, with a marketing campaign to “make it your own”. But despite a cult following in parts of Asia and some notable exceptions, few have gone all in on the Rebel. Until now…

Having built some big dollar creations including a supercharged Harley showstopper, Malaysia’s Beautiful Machines team wanted to get back to basics. Enter ‘Kechik’, a mini monocoque masterpiece, from the very ordinary Honda CG125 comes this extraordinary little build…

Make no mistake. When you look back at the ‘cafe racer boom’ of the last ten years from the comfort of your anti-grav recliner chair circa 2048, this will be the bike that you will see. Because all of our fiddly little brat, scrambler and tracker nuances will be lost in time like a replicant’s tears in rain…

Hookie Co. in Dresden sure do live up to the hype about precision German engineering, but what they add along the way is a sense of fun and relaxation. So it’s little wonder that surrounded by so much motorcycle goodness, many can’t help but place a more substantial order than just coffee…

You could say that the future has been a bit of an obsession for Denmark’s Jonas Sabel. As a founding member of a famous local shop, he’s decided to check out what he can do by himself and he’s looking towards the future of custom bikes as well. We’d call him a visionary, but the guy seems so humble…

“He proceeded to tell me that the HRC MotoGP team just came back from the track and had seen my bike. They piled out of the van and proceeded to snap some photos with it – Marc Marquez included. I had missed them by only 3 or 4 minutes.” Welcome to the world of Iowa’s Chris Kent…