Built

It’s not often you get a chance to become a part of something you’ve been a fan of for years, but that’s very much the case for me. Gary did a sterling job of editing Built for the previous 39 issues – I should know, I read them – and it’s a real pleasure picking up where he left off. In issue 40, we’ve found ourselves taking stock of the custom scene; looking back at where it came from, the breadth of what it encompasses now and a glimpse of where it’s going. Rick McCloskey’s era-defining photos from the 1970s (p76) show the early moments of the custom builders, while stalwarts like Jonas Hendrix from El Solitario (p6) and Andrew Almond from Bolt (p100) help us reminisce about years gone…

Jonas Hendrix is a member of the El Solitario crew and, like the rest of them, he’s not normal. He’s a Spain-adopted Mexican with the spirit and attitude of an outlaw on the run. You could confuse him for a character from a Sergio Leone movie; sipping whiskey and then creating havoc in a sweaty saloon. So when I proposed to shoot his latest Harley-Aermacchi two-stroke tracker build in 16:9 format – as if it were a Spaghetti Western – I could see his imagination running wild. A few weeks later, to the soundtrack of Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Jonas was racing the bike around an abandoned quarry near Barcelona like he’d just turned over the local Caixa. He even turned up with a bunch of…

Kengo Kimura has established an international reputation for his lightweight custom bikes. His connection to wrenching and riding goes back to the age of ten, when he raced motocross under the guidance of his brother until a life-changing crash forced him into a re-think. He decided to move away from racing and towards building custom motorcycles – to focus on what he had learned about the connections between human, wheels, performance and style. But his devotion to riding small, nimble off-road bikes in the woods stayed with him. Born in 1973, Kengo was raised in Hatsukaichi City in Hiroshima where people have deep, almost spiritual, respect and appreciation of the natural world. “Hiroshima is blessed with nature for riding a motorcycle,” says Kengo. “It is surrounded by mountains and forests;…

Blink and you might have missed this at The Malle Mile. Not because it was hidden but because it’s small, silent and devilishly fast. With bugger all money (sadly), no time (definitely), and loads of coffee (presumably), James and Nick from Jimmy’s Iced Coffee turned this 1979 CB650 from a garage lurker into an electric showstopper. Here’s how… Why restore a knackered old Honda? As the brand team at Jimmy’s, we’re into making things that people actually want to look at. We wanted to make a bike that fitted the brand’s style and sustainability ethos, so taking an old bike that isn’t working and rebuilding it from the ground up seemed fitting. Why all volts and amperes? Electric bikes are interesting, but they can be polarising for bikers as there…

Do one thing and do it well – that’s what we’re told. It’s not bad advice: think Rolex and watches; Mont Blanc and pens; Pier City and boxers. Having met at a dealership where nothing was fitted to a bike that didn’t have a BMW part number, Rory Milton and Stuart Hill decided, just shy of six years ago, that they’d stick to custom Beemers since that’s what they knew, and they haven’t stopped since. Pier City reached a new milestone when it was one of the first in the UK to customise an R18 (for BMW no less) and believe it or not, this little workshop in Brighton is one of the biggest suppliers of custom bits for R NineTs in the world. Not bad for two blokes with…

Guinness, the publisher of that book we all owned 20 Christmases ago, has 53,000 records in its database. There is an officially certified record for cycling backwards while playing the violin (40 miles), having the most snails on one’s face (48), the highest jump by a guinea pig (48cm) and even one for most records broken (530). But none for the world’s fastest bobbed motorcycle. If there was – and I strongly suggest the adjudicators make a quick visit to Thornton Hundred’s base in Milton Keynes to sew it up – then there would be only one winner and you’re looking at it. Before we get into the details, there are two obvious questions that need answering: why and how much? “Errr… because I can,” says Thornton Hundred founder Jody…