Chicara Nagata is one of those Da Vinci types who’ll never be a household name because instead of painting moderately attractive smirking Italian housewives he builds motorcycles, and sadly that just doesn’t have the same mainstream, Louvre-friendly appeal.
Nagata lives in the Saga Prefecture on Kyusyu Island in the Southern part of Japan, he’s a graphic designer by trade and has 30 years experience, making him one of the most sought after designers in southern Japan. His passion is hand building motorcycles and as you can see above and below, he has quite a knack for it. Astonishingly he spends between 5,000 and 7,000 hours per creation, none of his designs are sketched or modelled in CAD – he does it all from his head.
“I do not have an expensive high level machine. I do shave, sheet metal, welding and metalworking using a hand tool. It takes about 5000 to 7000 hours to make one motorcycle.” – Chicara Nagata
If you’d like to read an excellent interview with Chicara Nagata click here to visit our friends at MegaDeluxe, it’s well worth the trip.
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.
