The Week in Bikes, May 23rd, 2014

Welcome to The Week in Bikes, your weekly Cliffs Notes version of the best new custom bikes in the world.

Radical Guzzi's Retro Le Mans
This is what happens when you take a wonderfully insane German fabricator and toss in an obsession with Italian bikes. The only thing retro about this Guzzi Le Mans is the style — the bike itself was brand-freaking-new when he started yanking off pieces. Literally everything was done with performance in mind, including tossing out the frame in favor of a smaller, lighter, classic Guzzi number. The result? A thoroughly modern, light, 130 hp bike with insane style and performance that'll eat you alive if you're not ready for it.

Cafe Racer Dreams' BMW R100RS
When CRD was commissioned to build this bike, they were told to make it a sleeper, i.e. to make it look like a true 1977 BMW but with all the performance of a modern bike. They went to the parts bin and more or less blended a Ducati GT1000 into the BMW. As mashups go, it's kind of awesome.

Hageman's Yamaha XV920
Sure, there's been some solid mechanical work done to this bike, and sure, the suspension is vastly improved over what it was previously. But to get an XV920 to go from looking like this to the bike you see here is phenomenal. It's been transformed from a practical means of transportation to something you'd legitimately want to ride.

BMW Rennsport Replica by Austin Paintworks
From a couple of guys who generally restore and repaint bikes, this one's a 1970s-era interpretation of a 1950s-era BMW race bike. They heavily reworked the suspension and the frame to make sure the bike can hold its own on the track, then added some neat tricks like a headlight behind the front number plate, just to make sure the sucker's legal on the road.

Auto Fabrica's Triumph Bonneville Type 5
A whole team of people participated in the creation of this bike, from machinists, to designers, to Photoshop mavens whose sole job was to figure out how everyone else's ideas would come together. As a result, equal emphasis has been given to performance and engineering, rider comfort, and style. All we know is, everything came together beautifully, and if it's as nice to ride as it looks, it's a winner.

Macco Motors' Triumph Bonneville T100
Classy. Stylish. Rude. That's how the guys at Macco Motors describe their intentions for this bike. It needed to be all three, so they gave it a proper suspension (not to handle the curves, but to have a fantastic ride), chopped the frame, kept about half of the fuel tank's metal bare, then went about tweaking everything else. See that headlight? It's off a Triumph... the other Triumph.


Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He thinks this Triumph is gorgeous, but he'd probablly go with the Guzzi for himself.