Written by Martin Hodgson

Known as the one with the ‘wrongful impulse to hoard, to accumulate beyond what one can use and to refuse to share with others’, no he is not the bloke on your street stockpiling mountains of toilet paper, but the great dragon of The Hobbit, Smaug. This was the creature that came to mind when Charles and Enzo from Panache Customs stood back to admire their latest build. A French workshop renowned for their incredible attention to detail and brilliant build quality. They’ve once again taken on the challenge of building a Yamaha XS360 custom and delivered a fire breathing result that’s nearly impossible to slay!

Written by Martin Hodgson

They say you have to go big or go home; and as last year was drawing to a close we featured a high quality custom build from a new shop in Bulgaria. With the scene just getting started in the country, it was hard to know when we might hear from the workshop again. Well, we didn’t have to wait long, as Bull Moto Custom has had huge success since their opening salvo was fired with the company already tripling in size. Back with another Honda, the crew headed up by Ivan Mushev isn’t playing around, giving an old favourite a full makeover. With just their second full build they’ve added their unique Eastern European design to a Honda CB750 and come out with a trick sports tourer they call GT2.

When the custom culture began to boom again a decade ago there was a large element made up of middle-aged men rebuying the bikes of their youth and younger folks taking advantage of cheap and cheerful ’70s machines. Fast forward to 2020 and there is a new generation of builders who grew up with this culture inspiring their teenage minds and a select few have gone on to become the elite builders of today. Jody Millhouse is one such man, exploding onto the scene with an incredible catalogue of custom creations. The latest from the Thornton Hundred Motorcycles workshop is this celebrity commissioned Triumph T120 Ace, with bulk attitude to burn.

Written by Martin Hodgson

From Mr. T’s haircut to the DeLorean, shoulder pads and the Rubik’s Cube, everything that was popular in the ’80s seemed to have square edges. Add the fashion, some of that god awful synthesiser music and boy is it a decade that leaves a lot to be desired. The motorcycles were much the same, the British had collapsed, the two-strokes were all but gone and the superbike was yet to fully ripen. But now emerging from left field as the prices drop to temptingly low amounts, are good candidates for a custom makeover. Germany’s AMP Motorcycles has taken once such example, the Honda CBX750 and hit it out of the park with this remarkable retro remake.

Written by Martin Hodgson

When Tom Cruise rode a Kawasaki Gpz900R in the hit movie Top Gun, the mix of a flyboy on a motorbike just made perfect sense. Since WWII, pilots have been some of the biggest buyers of motorbikes, with up to 85% of those at the controls in the air believed to have a bike license. So it is little wonder that the two often inspire one another, and when Craig Marleau of Kick Start Garage in Northern California got a commission for just such a build he immediately knew the direction to take. From the bones of a 1976 Honda CB550f he’s built up a beautiful cafe racer with all the right inspiration from a ’50s fighter plane.

Written by Martin Hodgson

The spirit of rebellion runs deep in the motorcycle world; from the earliest days of racing on the boards, to the post war biker gangs, Easy Rider counter-culture and lads doing the ton around the Ace Cafe. But with popularity comes those who would push conformity, believing there is only one way to skin a cat and trying to police those who seek to be free. But Balamutti’s Vitaliy Selyukov cannot be tamed, his spirit unrestrained by convention he dreamt up one of the craziest contraptions you could imagine and now he’s brought it to life to race the Baikal Mile. It’s three wheels of supercharged Ducati power with just a handful of spikes to keep it upright on the Russian ice.

Written by Martin Hodgson

To say that the BMW R series range of motorcycles has become a huge hit in the custom scene is the mother of all understatements. Even the conservative big Bavarian caught on, releasing the R nineT five years ago and has the bruising R18 on the way. But aside from a cult following, the rest of the world has only ever appreciated the R series without falling totally in love. Not so in Germany, for the best part of 100 years the flat twins have been the number one machine. And to prove their passion runs deep, a customer approached Woidwerk for not one but two custom R bikes. This is the tale of the R100GS that emerged, no longer a big tourer but a sleek scrambler with plenty of custom style!

Written by Martin Hodgson

If you hang around a custom bike shop long enough to sit through a morning tea break or after hours for a beer, then you’ll hear all sorts of crazy ideas get thrown around. Most are mere fantasies about things nobody within a stone’s throw has the budget to pull off, but every now and then a little slice of genius or something that would be a hoot enters the conversation. A regular customer of Italy’s Nico Dragoni Motociclette was in the workshop when the topic of his little beach basher, a Yamaha TW125, came up. The idea was to turn it into a tribute to the Californian custom culture, and the light-hearted banter turned into one hell of a cool little build.

Written by Martin Hodgson

We’ve all dreamed about it at some point, handing in our resignation and stepping out into the world on our own to be the one who calls the shots, the boss! Some will make it but most of us, for good or for bad, will remain punching the clock from 9 to 5. From a very young age however, Lithuanian, Matas ‘Matt’ Rinkevičius had two things running through his veins to launch him to success. An entrepreneurial spirit and a deep love of all things motorcycles, so it makes absolute sense his company is called Two Wheels Empire and their latest offering is this beastly BMW K100 known as the Silverback Gorilla.

Written by Martin Hodgson

The days of the vast majority of the workforce clocking in at nine in the morning and heading home by five are all but over. The gig economy is here, shifts are scattered around the clock and job security can be a week by week proposition; no wonder people are stressed. So imagine what it’s like for a firefighter, solider and correctional officer, they need an extra avenue to unwind and what better way to do it than on a street scrambler ready to rip up the roads. Enter Canada’s Kevin Bergeron who builds just such beasts and the latest Berg & Co creation is this crafty Kawasaki KLR250.