The humble Honda CB250N isn’t the sort of motorbike you’d usually see being customised, especially not to this degree. That said, the team at Ellaspede have been making quite a name for themselves working with slightly unusual motorcycles. In fact, they’re currently giving one of them away here.
he Harley-Davidson Nightster has been a runaway success for Harley-Davidson since it was released in 2007, the bike offered people a custom look for under $9,000 USD and it was fitted with Harley’s famous 1200cc Sportster v-twin engine.
The R131 Fighter by Confederate Motorcycles is a bike I’ve been wanting to feature here on Silodrome for quite some time, in some respects it’s the epitome of an engineering first approach to motorcycle design, and that’s resulted in a bike that’s beautiful purely because form follows function.
This bike was nicknamed “The American” by its creator, Michael Woolaway (aka Woolie), the head motorcycle man at Deus Ex Machina in California. The fundamental ethos behind The American was that is should be as American as possible with as few internationally sourced parts as could be managed.
The Honda CB750 has probably been featured on Silodrome more than any other single motorcycle model for the very simple reason that there are just so many people out there producing stunning customs using it as a base platform.
This bike, a custom KTM Superduke 990, is the personal daily rider of Tony Prust – the founder of Analog Motorcycles.
The Honda GB250 is a motorcycle that lives very close to my heart, I have one that I use almost daily and despite the fact that I initially bought it to spend “6 months or so” learning how to ride in Hong Kong (it’s a big change from England and Australia) I still own it and love it almost 4 years later.
This cafe-racer-styled custom is based on a Ducati 1098R, a stonker of a bike to begin with that’s been made all the more cheerfully psychotic by an extensive series of tweaks, modifications and additions.
This is one of the newer customs from DP, it’s based on a Harley-Davidson 1200 Sportster but looks like a totally new animal. The front forks have been lowered then topped with RSD clip-on handlebars…
Chad Goings, owner of Goings Moto, recently set out on his own after doing an internship at Radical Ducati in Madrid. From a cafe racer perspective, an internship at Radical is the exact equivalent of a budding aircraft engineer doing an internship at Skunk Works.
Walt Siegl is, quite deservedly, one of the most famous custom motorcycle builders in the world. Far from the hideous kitch hellscape of the custom stretched out chopper scene, Walt works from his garage in New England and creates some of the most beautiful and technically advanced custom bikes you’ll find anywhere on Earth.
The Moto Guzzi Le Mans is rapidly becoming a popular target for cafe racer builders, the Le Mans is factory fitted with a classic v-twin positioned “sideways” in order to benefit from better airflow and this gives the bike an appealing, clean look.
