Several types of motorcycles can be called ‘trackers.’ The original is the board tracker, named after the machines that raced on board tracks in the USA in the 1910s and 1920s.
In the 1930s, as the board tracks faded away, flat track racers appeared: street bikes modified to race on dirt or clay ovals. Past icons include the Harley-Davidson XR-750, but others include flat trackers from BSA, Norton and Triumph. This style is still popular today, with interest spurred by an intense rivalry between Harley-Davidson and Indian.
Flat track motorcycles (or dirt trackers, as they are sometimes known) do not have front brakes, but the slimmed-down style has been copied by builders of ‘street tracker’ customs.
If you’re a custom builder, one of the most difficult briefs is for a race bike. No matter the genre or discipline of the project, the purpose-built, stripped-down nature of race machinery leaves minimal room for aesthetic creativity. After all, these bikes are not built to look pretty. They’re built to run a distance in…
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A classic Triumph flat tracker from the race director of the Wheels & Waves festival, a Virago influenced by 90s Japanese import culture, and the latest oddity from Lazareth.
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Building a custom bike is often beset with difficulties: there can be unreasonable client demands, unforeseen technical issues, cashflow problems, and in some countries, strict regulations to circumvent. We tend to dwell on these in our reports, but sometimes the build story is only half the real story. The other half is life outside the…
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Lots of people build a bike with the sole purpose of thrashing it. But it’s usually a ‘beater,’ with very little time or money plowed into the project. This svelte Yamaha XT 600 E was clearly built to get loose, but it’s also a remarkably cohesive and neat custom. Even if that wasn’t the original…
Read more »In a world where everyone is screaming for attention, Heinz Lange is an enigma. He has no catchy workshop name, no website…
Read more »Four years ago Eicher Motors, the owner of Royal Enfield, bought the famous British company Harris Performance. Since the 1970s, Harris has…
Read more »When Indian delivered a new Scout Bobber to young Dutch designer Luuc Muis, there was a catch: he had just 20 weeks…
Read more »Truly great motorcycle design requires a human touch. That’s why, in a world of digital design and 3D rendering, traditional crafts are…
Read more »Flat track racing is all the rage in Europe and the States, but it hasn’t really caught on in South Africa yet.…
Read more »The fourth and final episode of Slide has just dropped, and it’s a fascinating insight into the psychology of racers. What happens…
Read more »Motorcycle racing is a serious business. It’s time consuming, usually expensive, and always risky. But there are still a few folks willing…
Read more »REV’IT! has just dropped the third episode in the bite-sized series on flat track, Slide. This week we go behind the scenes…
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