n the midst of the anguish and heartache of tragedy can come some of life’s most important lessons. For Dutchman Arjan van den Boom it was the untimely passing of his beloved Father, that came with it the realisation that living his dream to its full potential couldn’t wait another day…

In many ways, Italy’s OMT Garage is the perfect nuclear racing family. Father Gaetano Troiano started the shop in 1978. Mother Silvana handles the media. And sons Marco and Mario are now pushing things into the 21st century and beyond with their love of racing and customisation. Take this blindingly good Yamaha XSR900 for instance…

Our recent story on the latest cool build from Spain’s Macco Motors and their work with Dutch watchmakers TW Steel got a particularly positive response from readers right around the world. So when we found out that they had just dropped a slick new video showing the bike in action, we thought that you’d probably like to see it, too.

TW Steel is a Dutch watch manufacturer that builds quality timepieces large enough to beat a man to death with. Recently they’ve been dabbling in the custom motorcycle scene, commissioning a series of bikes based around Yamaha’s incredible, unique-looking lineup. The latest builder to throw their sizeable hat into the ring on behalf of TW Steel is Spain’s Macco Motors, with their brand spanking new XSR900 cafe racer dubbed ‘The Desperado’.

Yamaha’s MT range is a funny old thing. With a single outing in the noughties in its ‘MT-01’ guise, the segment seemed to be pretty much done and dusted with Yamaha’s announcement in 2012 that the model was kaput. With the GFC barely over and Japan still reeling from the tsunami, few expected Yamaha to replace this ostentatious, genre-defying brute. And yet they did just that. 12 months later and hey presto, we get the MT-07 & MT-09. Well, not so much ‘we’ as ‘they’ because we’re guess there’s not too many Pipeburn readers who’d be desperate to own one. But now Yamaha has tried to redress that with their XSR700 & XSR900 bikes. With similar underpinnings to the MT models, they’ve enlisted the help of Shinya Kimura and Roland Sands to appeal to ‘us’ and the new-school custom scene as a whole. So, have they succeeded, or have they flunked out? Step into today’s class and let’s find out.