This is the new V-Rod Cafe Racer – it was developed and built over a period of months to look like an actual in-house Harley-Davidson pre-production prototype, with fastidious attention to detail throughout.
This build was a collaborative effort between Mark Hawwa at Donut Garage and Noel Muller of Black Cycles Australia. The bike was unveiled a few days ago, and it quickly became a main feature on many of the world’s top custom motorcycle websites – including Pipeburn and Bike EXIF.
Fast Facts – Donut Garage’s V-Rod Cafe Racer
- This is the Donut Garage V-Rod Cafe Racer, a Harley-Davidson V-Rod custom build, was conceived by Mark Hawwa and Noel Muller to resemble an authentic Harley pre-production prototype with exceptional attention to detail.
- The V-Rod’s distinctive 125 bhp Revolution engine, co-developed with Porsche, incorporates advanced tech for a Harley, like double overhead cams, liquid cooling, and electronic fuel injection – setting it well apart from the typical Harley models of the time.
- The V-Rod Cafe Racer was transformed through a series of frame modifications, suepsnoq upgrades, new brakes front and back, and all-new bodywork, giving it a unique look far from Harley’s standard performance cruisers.
- Based in Sydney, Donut Garage serves as a hub for automotive enthusiasts, showcasing custom vehicles, a fresh donut shop, and world-class coffee, blending car culture with a community space for the city’s automotive cognoscenti.
The Harley-Davidson V-Rod
The Harley-Davidson V-Rod, also known as the Harley-Davidson VRSC, is perhaps one of the Milwaukee motorcycle manufacturer’s most misunderstood models, certainly in the recent history of the company. It was developed in the late 1990s as a new Harley for a new millennium, and it would be the first production bike made by the company with overhead cams and liquid-cooling.
This is the front page of the brochure for the Harley-Davidson Night Rod Special, a version of the V-Rod that perhaps best encapsulates its styling as a performance cruiser. Image courtesy of Harley-Davidson.
The most impressive part of the V-Rod is undeniably its engine, a 60° V-twin developed by Porsche Engineering working side by side in Germany with a team of Harley-Davidson engineers. Named the Revolution engine, it was based on the Harley-Davidson VR1000 V-twin racing engine and it could produce as much as 125 bhp – a previously unheard of power level for a Harley V-twin.
The Revolution V-twin was an impressive feat of engineering, understandably given the Porsche input, and it featured double overhead cams per bank, four valves per cylinder, liquid cooling, electronic fuel injection, a digital ignition, and a displacement of 1,131cc (1.1 liters).
The engine it was based on, the Harley-Davidson VR-1000 V-twin, was developed by engineer Mark Miller. He had significant design input from the likes of Erik Buell, Cosworth Engineering, and Jerry Branch of Branch Flowmetrics. The cylinder head and electronic fuel injection systems were designed by Roush Industries, and it would be Roush that built the engines.
Given the racing heritage of the V-Rod’s engine, it’s perhaps a little surprising that Harley didn’t create their own production sports bike based around it. The models that did reach production were all performance cruisers, likely due to the fact that this would appeal to the Harley faithful.
Most custom versions of the V-Rod that have been built have taken the bike even further down the performance cruiser path, adding oversized front wheels, ape hanger handlebars, and a questionable plethora of chrome and LED lighting.
The V-Rod left production in 2017, it was replaced by a new family of modern Harley-Davidson motorcycles that also featured liquid cooling, overhead cams, and all the other modern tech that debuted on the V-Rod.
The Donut Garage V-Rod Cafe Racer is a complete reimagining of the V-Rod platform, with a modified rake angle, new forks, a new rear end, upgraded brakes, and all-new bodywork.
Donut Garage
Donut Garage is based in Sydney, Australia. It was launched by Mark Hawwa and Simon Francis in 2023 as a space for automotive and motorcycle enthusiasts of all types, with a number of in-house vehicles from iconic rotary-engined classics like the 1967 13B Mazda Cosmo, 20B Cosmo, and series 3 RX7; as well as a fan-favourite DeLorean DMC-12.
Amongst the display cars and motorcycles, you’ll also find the next custom project the team are building, an ultimate sleeper soccer-mum SUV.
At the front of Donut Garage is a drive-up donut shop that turns out hundreds of fresh donuts every day across dozens of different varieties. World class coffee is also on offer, Australia makes some of the best coffee in the Southern Hemisphere after all, and they do deliveries.
The Donut Garage V-Rod Cafe Racer
The Donut Garage V-Rod Cafe Racer is a custom motorcycle that was dreamt up by Mark Hawwa, founder of the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride and co-founder of Donut Garage.
The purpose of the project was to create a professionally-built motorcycle that looks like it could have been developed in-house at Harley-Davidson, as a production-ready cafe racer variant of the V-Rod.
The Revolution V-twin that powers the V-Rod was developed by Porsche Engineering in Germany, with a team of Harley engineers working alongside.
The build started initially as a conversation between Mark and Noel Muller of Black Cycles Australia at Throttle Roll, the largest annual custom motorcycle show in Australia held in Sydney each year and organized by Mark and his team.
Mark had always wondered what a true cafe racer version of the V-Rod would look like, and this would be the idea that sparked the conversation with Noel. Before long the two men came to an agreement to collaborate on the build, and Noel set about finding a good, original V-Rod to use as the donor vehicle.
After a few months he found a low-mile V-Rod that had been imported to Australia from Japan, he bought and it, and the project began in earnest. The bike was disassembled and work began on changing the frame geometry, the tail needed to be lifted and the rake angle reduced from the original 38º to 34º.
A new set of custom triple trees were made by Michael from MDS Fab from 50mm 6061 aluminum, they were then fitted with a pair of 2006 GSX-R inverted forks which were rebuilt by Ride Dynamics to lower their internals. The bike was then given billet clip-on handlebars, Renard switches, Beringer brakes and levers, and Motogadget electronics.
A pair of 18” tubeless spoked wheels with billet hubs were supplied by Adrian from Canyon TT Wheels, then fitted with Metzeler Marathon Ultra tires front and back. The rear frame was raised by 60mm and a pair of fully-adjustable piggyback YSS shock absorbers were fitted.
The bike was then given all new bodywork, each piece of which was hand-formed by the team at Black Cycles Australia. Noel also combined parts from a Honda CB and a Ducati Monster to create a unique tank cover.
The completed bike looks almost nothing like the production examples of the V-Rod, which is exactly what Mark had originally envisaged.
It’s one of those custom motorcycles that leaves you wondering what might have been, how would the public have responded to a production version of the V-Rod that looked like this? We’ll never know of course, but given the wildly positive reaction to this build it does look like it might have been a strong seller.
This is one of those custom builds that leaves you wondering what would have happened in Harley had developed a production supersport version of the V-Rod platform and offered it to the general public.
If you’d like to read more about this custom V-Rod you can visit the extensive build report on it here.
If you’d like to see more about Donut Garage you can visit the site here, and if you’d like to follow Black Cycles Australia you can find them on Instagram here.
Photography: Pat Stevenson | @patstevenson
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
