Your complete guide to cafe racer motorcycles, from classic bikes to modern-day specials.
Here you’ll find everything from traditional Triumph and Honda cafe racers to the latest BMWs, Ducatis and Yamahas from new wave builders. Discover the cafe racer parts, seats and performance upgrades that’ll take your own cafe racer bike to the next level.
Even though the Ducati 900 SS is some three decades old, we still see a lot of customs based around the 90° V-twin Desmo engine. A little online digging reveals the reason: over 25,000 examples of this model rolled out of the factory in Borgo Panigale. That’s an impressive number, and around half of Ducati’s…
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For some people, custom motorcycles are just a hobby. But for others, they put food on the table—and that’s when it pays to have a good measure of business savvy. Tony Prust gets it; he runs a tight ship at his shop, Analog Motorcycles. Every new customer gets directed to an online inquiry form, so…
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A few years ago, building a cafe racer usually meant imbuing it with a sense of nostalgia. But these days, the custom scene is just as much about modernizing older motorcycles. So we’re seeing more and more builds that combine sharp lines and a sense of minimalism, with performance upgrades matched to ‘neo-retro’ looks. This…
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Eastern Spirit Garage is probably Poland’s premier custom workshop. But they focus on quality over quantity, with fewer than a dozen builds over the last seven years. Shop boss Sylwester has picked up the pace a little recently, though. Three months ago he revealed an amazing XS650 bobber, and he’s now just thrown the wraps…
Read more »A sleek and sophisticated Thruxton from Massachusetts, a tiny BMW balance bike from the Netherlands, a rare Royal Enfield Interceptor up for…
Read more »The year is 1986, and Tom Cruise is playing Maverick in Top Gun—flying an F-14 Tomcat by day and tearing around on…
Read more »The Buell X1 gets its turn with the amazingly prolific builders at K-Speed. Plus an impossibly elegant CB550 from Kott Motorcycles, and…
Read more »If there’s something missing from Ducati’s current lineup, it’s a modern cafe racer with strong ties to the past. Sure, there’s the…
Read more »Arno Overweel builds pretty wild custom motorcycles. He’s not afraid of bolting a turbo onto a Honda CBX1000, for example. But he…
Read more »Ever heard of analysis paralysis? It happens when you’ve got so many ideas, your project stalls because you can’t make your mind…
Read more »A Ducati 900SS rebuilt in the style of the classic 900 Super Sport Desmo, a Moto Guzzi V7 Sport endurance racer converted…
Read more »A Yamaha Virago with Ducati superbike suspension from the US, a stripped down Ducati 1198S Corse from France, a Norton Commando from…
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