There are enough names for the various styles of bikes, from stockers to real racers and every tarted-up bike in between, that it’s absolutely limiting to call anything you want to a cafe racer. Just silly.

Stocker, chopper, bobber, flat stracker, street tracker, dualsport, tourer, sportbike, supermoto, enduro, hog, scrambler, dresser, rat bike, brat, and the list could continue for pages. If you can’t select a more specific name for a bike that doesn’t have what is obviously a particular, albeit loose, set of features that make a cafe, then a sense of discernment is not your strong suit.

“A Cafe Racer is, in the simplest definition, a street legal motorcycle that captures some of the aura of a genuine road racer. But like most simple definitions, this one hardly covers every facet. Factory technicians with unlimited funds might produce a machine loosely based on the motorcycles they sell for everyday transportation – a handbuilt 170mph AMA Championship racer with a headlight. And they can call it a Cafe Racer. But the kid down the block can add a few fiberglass to his street wobbler…. and he’ll have a Cafe Racer too. In between, there are dozens of true dual-purpose machines that people ride to work during the week, and perhaps run in production races over the weekend…or in informal Sunday morning contests with friends on any empty, back country road. The variations are virtually endless. Because Cafe Racer is such an indefinite term, any bike that someone thinks looks like a roadracer to him is a legitimate Cafe Racer. And since most are custom built, there’s no such thing as a standard format. It’s strickly Road Racer Free Form at every level.”

For me, this definition works just fine and certainly describes the H1 featured here perfectly. The Ace Cafe version may differ, not that it matters to anyone except an original Ace Cafe veteran.