What is it that makes you click? In a world of pageviews, shares and impressions, I’d be living larger if I knew the answer to that, but what I do know is that these five custom motorcycles have it. The top dogs of September, these are the motorcycles that raked in views by the thousands and kept you on page to take in the fine details.
While August brought us a healthy variety of terrain and tarmac, this month’s heavy hitters consist almost entirely of café racers (a pair of BMWs, a Guzzi and a Royal Enfield) with a tracker thrown in for good measure. Each rich in their own way, join us in a victory lap for these five server-crashing customs, and the talented souls that brought them to life.
Royal Enfield Bullet 500 Tracker by Frontwheel Motors
Frontwheel Motors in Indonesia has a soft spot for Royal Enfield, and their latest build turns a 2016 Bullet 500 into a flat tracker that looks like it rolled out of the early 1970s Trackmaster era. The shop’s lead, Chandra Gunawa—himself a former Royal Enfield Indonesia employee—was handed this Bullet as a showpiece, and couldn’t resist transforming it into a tail-sliding wild child. The idea was simple: create something that would be perfectly at home on the banked quarter-mile, look striking at show events and pay respect to that old Trackmaster silhouette.
To reshape the Bullet’s cruiserish flow into flat track stance, Frontwheel made a number of geometry and chassis tweaks. They chopped and adjusted the steering neck angle, extended the swingarm by a few inches and fabricated a kicked-up rear tail loop via a custom subframe—all bolted on so the stock frame remains intact, cleverly hidden behind new side covers. Up front, MT-25 forks from Yamaha (plus a custom brace) are grafted in, and the bike rides on 19-inch TK Racing rims with Shinko tires. Out back, new shocks replace stockers, and the front brake is removed altogether, leaving only a rear disc in textbook flat track style.
The vintage aesthetic is everywhere: a hand-built Trackmaster-style fuel tank, a solo seat with a passenger pad, classic flat track bars with minimal switchgear and only the essentials (no headlight, no indicators, no speedo). The presence of a small taillight bolted to the swingarm nods to safety without over-engineering for road use. Finishing touches include grippy off-road pegs, a Frontwheel-branded points cover and a discreet box panel to hide less attractive mechanical bits. The final look, completed in Competition Red with gold Royal Enfield badges, is exactly what happens when chops are executed with love: raw, sharp, and impossible to ignore. [More]
BMW R100R Café Racer by Earth Motorcycles
In their eight years of custom work, Earth Motorcycles has carved out a specialization in BMW boxers, with more than sixty percent of their portfolio built around R100 and R80 platforms. But instead of repeating themselves, they decided to distill all that experience into one flagship build: a 1990 BMW R100R transformed into a purpose-driven café racer. The aim? To move beyond parts swaps and decorative flourishes toward a bike with a unified vision—one that delivers coherence in silhouette, geometry and detail.
To start, Earth stripped off the stock subframe, removed every unnecessary bracket and fabricated a new subframe that matches the main frame tubing in diameter. The mountings are hidden, welds invisible and the whole rear section reads as a continuous, clean form. The forks are lowered and fit with custom CNC yokes, and the top yoke mounts a Motogadget gauge. Other modifications up front include a 3D-printed fender, drag-style bars and internal wiring through the bars. Meanwhile, the twin-disc BMW styling cues are bridged to a more vintage posture by dropping the GS-derived tank in favor of an older R100 version, welded and sealed with no seams visible.
Mechanically, the build is equally thorough. Earth refreshed the engine—new gaskets, seals, crank bearings—and gave the carbs an ultrasonic cleaning. To address the unavoidable boxer engine tilt, Earth Motorcycles crafted a cast-aluminum cover that smooths the top edge between the block and tank for a more natural look. The drivetrain and wheels have been sandblasted, Cerakoted, and outfitted with new discs and braided Venhill lines. Electronics were overhauled too, with a Motogadget mo.unit Blue, keyless ignition and updated regulator. Rear-sets from Cognito Moto, stainless hardware everywhere and a pair of SC-Project exhausts (via WalzWerk) finish the package. [More]
BMW R100 Café Racer by 72 Performance USA
72 Performance USA has kicked things up a notch with their latest BMW R100 café racer. The workshop, founded by Antonio Schefle Rodriguez (formerly of 72 Cycles Performance in Spain), along with partners Cole Munger and Brad Eicholz, is doing just ten of these builds—each based on the same template. They’ve finished the first one, which builds on their earlier R100, but includes upgrades they say they couldn’t resist, incorporating better handling, cleaner visuals and custom touches that kick things up a notch.
Underneath the Gulf Blue finish lies serious mechanical work. The donor is a BMW R100/7, stripped to bare metal, then rebuilt with a Siebenrock kit, Mikuni TM38 flatslide carbs and electronic ignition from Euro Moto Electrics. The original square-valve covers have been swapped for classic peanut-style units, and the area where the airbox once lived is filled by a clean custom cover. Out back, they’ve grafted on the Paralever final drive and swingarm from a newer R100R Mystic—and with that came a conversion to a single-shock, via a custom-fabricated asymmetrical subframe and a tuned Hagon shock. The front also got reinforced with custom yokes and Triumph Daytona 955 forks. Wheels are 18F/17R laced tubeless rims now wrapped in Michelin Road 6s, plus twin Brembo 320 mm floating discs and braided lines up front for serious stopping power.
The high-impact bodywork on the BMW is a mix of repurposed and custom-built parts, consisting of a tank from an R65, and the fairing, belly pan and tail section are made from scratch in Kevlar-reinforced fiberglass. The exhaust is twin stainless steel pipes running through the frame, lights are custom LEDs front and rear and the cockpit is trimmed out with clip-ons, a Daytona speedo, rear-sets and keyless ignition from Motogadget. The paintwork punches too: Gulf Blue dominates, with ‘Old Gold’ powdercoat on the calipers, exhausts, yokes and bolts, and off-white / Alcantara leather seat by Senen Leatherworks. It’s elegant, aggressive, and unmistakably competent—and yes, this one’s already taken. [More]
Moto Guzzi Breva Café Racer by ShifCustom
Wisdom, imagination and a splash of showmanship: that’s what you get when Yuri Shif and his team at ShifCustom take on a Moto Guzzi Breva 750 and reimagine it as an ‘Aero Guzzi.’ Based in Minsk, Belarus, ShifCustom has two decades of fabricating weird and wonderful machines, and this build channels aviation themes with gusto—drawing on Moto Guzzi’s WWI-pilot roots (Carlo Guzzi, Giorgio Parodi, Giovanni Ravelli) for inspiration. The original V-twin engine forms the heart of the build, but almost everything else was hand-crafted or heavily modified to support the vision.
Mechanically, the build is full of surprises. ShifCustom kept the Breva’s swingarm but reworked its rear suspension into a custom linkage system, tucking the rear shock high—between the cylinder heads—for both visual drama and functional compactness. Up front, a parallelogram-style fork hides its shock behind bodywork, and the fork legs and swingarm surfaces share grooved, matched aesthetic cues. The wheels are bespoke 19-inch discs up front (with a perimeter disc layout), while the rear uses a duplex drum brake—a nod to vintage hardware crossed with modern craftsmanship.
The visual and finish details bring the aviation motif to full altitude. A stretched fairing and fuel tank taper off to a tail section that narrows like an aircraft fuselage, while brushed aluminum panels are punctuated by delicate blue pin-striping and luxurious brown leatherwork. Lighting is minimal but intentional—two LED headlights, a slim vertical LED taillight and an analog/digital combo speedometer tucked behind the fairing. Grip, foot controls, exhausts and intakes are all custom, too. The result isn’t just style with flash—it’s the type of machine that would tie an entire room together. [More]
Royal Enfield Continental GT 650 by Wannabe-Choppers
When Royal Enfield tapped Wannabe-Choppers to create a special version of the Continental GT 650, they knew Enrico de Haas wouldn’t deliver something ordinary. What rolled out of his German workshop looks like a café racer pulled straight out of an alternate timeline—one where sand-casting never fell out of fashion, and metal was shaped as much by imperfection as precision. The project began with a stock GT, but nearly everything recognizable has been replaced by custom-cast alloy and brass.
Instead of forming sheet metal or chasing carbon fiber, Enrico leaned into his trademark technique: sand-casting. The fairing, tank and tail are all monocoque pieces made from dozens of individually cast sections, first modeled and 3D printed, then cast, milled, welded and smoothed into shape. Smaller parts like badges, heel plates and brackets received the same treatment, some in brass for contrast. It’s an unorthodox approach for a café racer, but the payoff is a raw, tactile surface that carries tiny casting flaws as part of its character. Behind the skin, the stock Royal Enfield twin remains largely intact, but surrounded by roughly 150 custom-made components that transform its presence entirely.
What makes the build fascinating is its refusal to hide the hand of the maker. Air bubbles in castings, uneven textures and the occasional imperfect line are left visible, standing in contrast to the polished aluminum and brass detailing that dominates the bike. It’s a design language that doesn’t just accept imperfection—it celebrates it. Add in touches like a German-engraved brass fuel cap, a split saddle in distressed leather and carefully chosen premium accessories, and you have a Continental GT that stands as an expression of old-world craftsmanship in the modern era. It’s a café racer at heart, but one that proves there’s beauty in the unorthodox. [More]
