This Moto Guzzi 950 from Stile Italiano had made café racer/custom bike news some time ago, but it’s just too beautiful not to share.
Stile Italiano was launched in 1999 and specializes in selling high-end classic, collectable and exotic motorcycles and cars, which include a Ducati 900NCR Endurance racer ridden by Virginio Ferrari, Moto Guzzi 850 Le Mans Mk I, and, and, and, and…. Just too many to list! (Please click here to visit their website.)
But hidden in their workshop lies another passion – building exquisite, ball-achingly beautiful café racers.
However, Stile Italiano’s founder Gianluca Tieppolo, business parner Chritian Diana, skilled mechanic of 25 years, Loris Lession, and his team of skilled builders only build café racers for themselves. That way, they could pour their souls into their creations and conform not to what others want.
They work on mostly Moto Guzzis. This “950” here started from the Moto Guzzi 850 T3, first introduced in 1975. As Stile Italiano took the design cues from Honda’s legendary CR750 race bike, this project was then christened as “Moto Guzzi CR950.” Gianluca wanted this to be their most elegant project and chose a 70’s racebike styling.
First, the Guzzi’s frame was modified to it the revised bodywork. The stock forks were replaced with a pair of 80s-era anti-dive forks, while a pair of rare FOX air shocks took up the job of suspending the rear.
But take a closer look at that front brake. It was considered the ultimate drum brake of its time. This is a 300mm magnesium drum/hub Fontana item, usually found on the Triumph Trident racebikes of the 60’s.
Since the bodywork came from the aforementioned Honda CR750, it had to be modified to allow the engine’s transverse cylinders to poke through, creating an integral form rather than two separate “skin-and-bones” look. A new rear end was fashioned to complete the bike’s lines, instead of leaving the original 850 T3’s fender.
Other beautiful bits include clip-on handlebars and an original Moto Guzzi V7 tachometer. The tank is handmade from alloy and has a battery housing underneath it.
As for the engine, it has been modified from stock. The heads were ported, and the capacity increased to 950cc. The heads are twin spark using a Dyna ignition system. The original 30mm Dell’Orto VHB carburetors were changed to Dell’Orto 40mm items. Spent gasses exit through a custom Virex system whose muffler box wraps up tight underneath the bike.
Finally, when it came to completing the bike, Stilo Italiano would not compromise on the best paint scheme, fit and finish as a reflection of their shop being specialized in high-end classics. Gianluca chose the special “mirror effect” like what you’d see on a grand piano. There were touches of brass to complement the black and gold paint scheme.
It took the team a total of four months of painstaking work to complete the CR950. Worth it, in our books.
Let’s see what these guys can come up with next!
Source: Return of the Café Racers, photography by Max Trono
Art of Speed, Malaysia’s very own homegrown Old-Skool & Kustom Kulture event, is back with its annual treat for motor heads showcasing the local custom scene comprising of customised cars and bikes, art galleries as well as interactive activities and exciting lucky draw giveaways!
According to, Asep Ahmad Iskandar, Founder of Art of Speed Malaysia, “This year’s edition is definitely our best installation yet, with a variety and complexity of not only participating vehicles, but an expansion of activities throughout the weekend to suit all age groups.”
“This includes a Show and Shine competition in an air-conditioned 150,000 square feet hall with customs and classics in Hall A, NEAT Fest occupying Hall C curated by NoEqual, an art gallery called Moto Circus with local and international artists, expanded “LIVE’ acts for Sound Circus, as well as children and family friendly activities such as House of Vans workshop, Soapbox Show & Go!, marketplace and a youth arena featuring an indoor skate & BMX park by VANS”.
Art of Speed 2018 (AOS 2018) will be held at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park, Serdang (MAEPS), on 28 – 29 July 2018 from 10:00 am – 7:00 pm. The show is expecting 40,000 visitors across both days.
Cars and bikes enthusiasts will have the chance to meet international guests from:
Special highlights for AOS 2018 will include:
With music being an instrumental segment of Art of Speed, the main stage of AOS now known as ‘Sound Circus’ will feature Fox Wanna Fly as the opening act on Saturday launching the event’s official theme song entitled “Inspirasi”. AOS 2018 goers will also be treated to popular bands Plague Of Happiness who will be the main act on Saturday and a comeback concert by Bittersweet who will close the event on Sunday with a bang!
Last but not least, there will be daily lucky draws on Saturday and Sunday respectively, where the winner will win a paid package trip for ONE (1) to visit the 27th Annual Yokohama Hotrod Custom Show 2018 & a fully custom ONE (1) unit C600R Streetcub by FNG Works. These prizes will be given away on Saturday & Sunday respectively.
Keeping up with its tradition of inspiring locals, the organisers will once again bring in ‘souped up’ vintage & custom vehicles for the show from overseas. This year, visitors will be treated to:
Another highlight vehicle will be specially flown in from USA to be featured at the House of Vans booth inside HALL A that is:
Other Art of Speed 2018 activities include:
Art of Speed 2018 will also organise its fourth Mega Club Gathering and Roda Rumble by the Retro Mania boys that will inject new excitement to all classic, retro and olskool vehicle owners.
The winner of Best of Show motorcycle and automobile categories will win package trips to the 27th Annual MOONEYES Yokohama Hotrod and Custom Show this coming December as the Guest of Honour.
7th Annual Art Of Speed Malaysia 2018 Powered by PETRONAS
Date: 28 & 29 July 2018
Venue: MAEPS, Serdang
Time: 10:00am* – 7:00pm
A tiered ticket system. Speed lane ticket can enter the halls at 10am & General Admission at 11am. This is done to manage the collector-based fans that attend the event very early.
Speedlane ticket: RM30*
General admission: RM15*
*Both tickets are valid for both days. Ticket counter will open at 9am to sell Speedlane & General Admission tickets.
For more information about this event, please visit www.artofspeedmy.com or www.facebook.com/ArtOfSpeedMY/
Artikel oleh: Wahid Ooi Abdullah
It’s probably an injustice if we looked at custom bikes without studying the elements of art and philosophy. Production motorcycles are also works of art, but being produced on the scale of hundreds and thousands, they are considered as being the products of certain templates.
Custom bike builders, on the other hand, operate on the philosophy of one: The one and only. The best one. The One.
That’s certainly what Omar Jumiran, the proprietor of Eastern Bobber, one of Malaysia’s premiere custom motorcycle builders, had in mind when he created his master creation seen here known as the Bone-X.
The Bone-X has earned Omar and Eastern Bobber a spot at the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building at the Intermot show in Cologne, Germany, to be held in October this year, after winning the competition at the Motonation event in early December. Motonation is sponsoring Omar’s trip there. (Please click on the link below for our report from Motonation.)
I had first met Omar two years ago when I covered the Triumph Malaysia-Art of Speed Invitational Bike Build-Off in 2015. Eastern Bobber had been one of the four finalists. Meeting him at his home again, there’s the signature Eastern Bobber Batbike and, the space-framed and girder suspended bike. There were also robot sculptures scattered around the yard.
“I had wanted to build something totally unseen before. So much so, I couldn’t even name the concept for Bone-X,” laughed the soft-spoken ex-metal welder and wrought iron artist.
It’s through this expertise that Omar bent and welded parts of Bone-X, without resorting to CNC machining. Almost every part of the bike is metal, save for the tyres and parts of the brake and clutch cables.
Everything on the bike is radical, starting from two large springs sitting on top of the miniscule rectangular gas tank which forms the bike’s backbone.
The springs are attached to the fore and aft upper suspension levers. Upon closer inspection, one half of each spring is double coiled. “The single coiled part takes care of compression damping, while the double sprung part handles rebound. The levers are long so it needs more spring strength to suspend each end of the bike,” explained Omar. The springs are laid down flat thus more spring tension is needed, compared to most production bikes whose shocks are mounted almost vertical.
Regardless, the springs contribute to something that looks like a rib cage.
Omar aimed for a symmetrical look on each end of the bike, using large diameter, 21-inch wheels. While the rear assembly forms a single-sided swingarm, the front results in a hub centre-steering suspension. The handlebar is attached to the front suspension’s upright link via a shaft on ball joints.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the hub-centre steering front suspension layout ever since I saw the Elf Honda GP race bike in the 80’s, ridden by Ron Haslam. I was just a kid back then.”
Omar opened up a little more, “In my opinion, forks have their distinct shortcomings, hence the single arm setup was explored to take its place. I liked the Yamaha GTS when it came out and I feel it’s a real shame that manufacturers have not continued down that route.” (You can read about the Elf Honda and Yamaha GTS here.)
Heading downwards, the 1967 AJS engine has been either been chromed or polished to fit the overall chromed theme. It’s impossible to miss the exhaust downpipe being routed through the frame’s vertical member.
There’s a vertical lever next to the left side of the engine. Everyone had first thought it was the gear shifter, but it turned out to be the lever for the centrestand, instead. “Ah, the handshifter is overdone and too mainstream now, so I wanted to do something different.”
The powertrain arrangement’s beautiful simplicity is set out in plain sight. A primary drive chain transmits power from the crankshaft to the dry clutch, whose shaft is also the input shaft to the gearbox. But Omar performed some modifications to the final drive. “The final drive chain exits on the left side originally, but I can’t let it run on the outside (left side) of the wheel. So I attached the final drive to an idler shaft to drive the sprocket on the right side.”
The rear wheel’s hub carries the rear sprocket and disc brake.
The result is an organic-looking bike. To Omar’s and his peers, the Bone-X looks skeletal, thereby earning its namesake. However, to the unitiated Joe Public, the bike resembles something inspired by H.R. Giger’s biomechanical concepts.
To our eyes, the Bone-X is as good as it gets, but in the eyes of the artist, there’s room for improvement. “Certain parts of the bike still need better finishing. It looks alright under the lights currently, but we are required to also display the bike outdoors in Germany. It’s during this instance when the imperfections will stick out like sore thumbs.”
“I do hope there are kind souls out there who sees the importance of a Malaysian bike actually competing at the international show. I wouldn’t want to embarrass Malaysia with an unfinished bike, and while it’s hard for me to say this, I will appreciate sponsors who could assist me in completing the Bone-X. it’s time we step out from being Jaguh Kampung,” hopes Omar.
Omar is fully dedicated to the Bone-X now, as The One bike for him. As for us and together with Omar, we hope Bone-X will be The One in the hearts of the international judges and peers in Germany.
Do follow this story all the way to Intermot in Germany.
PICTURE GALLERY
Pictures of a custom Harley-Davidson XL1200 by Thrive showed up on the internet lately, and for good reasons.
Thrive Motorcycle is based in Jakarta, Indonesia with the reputation of building some of the most beautiful custom bikes. This example, dubbed the Kuzuri is a prime example.
The project began two years ago when the custom builders were looking for a stock Harley-Davidson engine which was to be used as the testbed for developing their T/H/R/V brand of parts and accessories. A friend of theirs had 2000 XL1200 Sportster, by coincidence. The builders started fitting the new parts to it initially, handcrafting more along the way.
As an overall theme started to take shape, the Thrive team visited the Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show and found discovered many great designs and, the traditional Japanese chopper. It was also here that they found the inspiration for Kuzuri, or wolverine in Japanese.
The team ordered a custom rigid frame from another custom garage and started shaping the aluminium panels, aiming for a bike with “timeless and streamlined looks” that’s clean, sleek and minimalist.
Thrive built the gas tank, headlight fairing, tail unit, oil tank and electrical in-house around the frame and engine. The forks were shortened to allow the bike to hug the ground. Custom accessories such as switchgear, footpegs, gullwing handlebars, brakeless front hub and Mooneyes grips were installed.
The Sportster’s stock belt final was converted to a chain drive. A chain-tensioner fashioned out of a skateboard wheel was installed underneath the drive chain.
Another cool feature is the stop light, modified from a Softail and hidden beneath the rear fender.
As the final touch, Thrive sprayed-painted the frame and body in sapphire blue and silver.
MotoNation’s Motoring Art Festival made its second roadshow stop at the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur on the 26th August 2017, after visiting Kota Bharu, Kelantan on 5th August 2017.
Greeting us at the foyer, in front of the entrance to the gallery was the 1Malaysia Chopper, which was built by the famed Orange County Cycles (OCC) builder, stars of the TV series, American Chopper. Seeing it live outside the confines of the hall at MaTIC (Malaysian Tourism Centre) and in two-dimensional pictures was an entirely different experience.
The bike is fully raked out, with a large-diameter steel tube frame connecting everything.
There are details of Visit Malaysia scattered around it, including a miniature of the Petronas Twin Towers mounted to the lower front frame spars.
The festival seeks to unite petrolheads of every disposition under the banner of automotive creativity. There were customized motorcycles, as one could expect, but the manner of displays made the event ever more impressive.
“There are currently motor shows, auto festivals, auto salons, but these are all individual motoring cultures,” said En. Faisal bin Mohamad Ali, the Executive Director of MotoNation. “What MotoNation is trying to do is to put all these cultures together under one roof.” Similarly, there are well-known players to a small community only, and MotoNation wishes to expose them to a larger segment.
“Different states in Malaysia have different motoring cultures. For example, we found out in Kota Bharu that while there aren’t many high-end cars, they made their vehicles beautiful and dropped in great sound systems. But you won’t get to see these cars in Kuala Lumpur.”
“These enthusiasts have their own clubs and keep it within themselves. So we want to get all the different enthusiast into the main event in December.”
The motorcycles were exhibited in the mail gallery. The large capacity motorcycles occupied the floor area, while the smaller and lighter Street Cubs were placed along the central spiral walkway, which circled the main atrium. The first impression we had was the striking similarity to the Art of the Motorcycle Exhibition in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, held in 1998.
The big bikes were generally cruisers from Harley-Davidson, Yamaha and an Indian.
A Harley Fat Bob looked fairly stock but the see-through plexiglass wheel hubs gave the impression that the tyres were floating in midair.
Hungryghost Custom Inc.’s Boss, Ahmad Junaidi Abdul Aziz got his hands on a customer-owned Indian Scout and did some impressive work on it.
Junaidi replaced the rear tyre with a 240mm-section rubber, which fitted nicely into the space between the Scout’s swingarm spars. Junaidi pointed out, “That’s the maximum width. You couldn’t fit a pen in the space between the tyre and swingarm.”
A pair of Tommy Gun exhaust pipes swept all the way to rear, and the bike was sprayed with a handsome navy blue paint.
The finishing touch was Junaidi’s trademark ornament – ornately carved metal pieces wrapped around the fork stanchions, between the triple clamps.
A chopped Virago sat a few metres away. It didn’t look like much, initially, until you noticed that a vertical steel bar replaces the foot-operated gear lever. The clutch lever was moved to top of that bar.
There was also a handsome Harley Shovelhead which mimicked the FL of yore.
An extensively custom-painted and pinstriped Evo sat not far away, with the word Bugis proudly emblazoned on the top of the fuel tank.
A chopped and bobbed Evo Softail with Red Garage stickers sat facing the entrance – all stripped down to the bare essentials and nothing more.
Next to the big bikes was a section dedicated to the display of sculptures formed from recycled motorcycle parts, including headlamps, carburetors, sparkplugs, wire wheel spokes, etc.
The Street Cubs came in all sorts of shapes, sizes and creative themes, developed from the Honda Cub, Honda CG125 and MZ Mosquito scooter.
Those based on Honda Cubs were generally fitted with oversized tyres, but retained their unmistakable shapes. A standout the was given the Ironman treatment throughout, complete with an Ironman mask up front.
But the most special has to be a stretched Honda Super Cub, which the owner called the “Super Sub Limousine.” It could carry three adults or six children at one go.
The CG125s were stripped bare then custom finished.
The Mosquitoes on the other hand were stripped of their bodywork, then given even fatter tyres.
In the auditorium meanwhile, the SUPERB TERAJU Walk-In Bizpitch (also known as Jelajah Usahawan – “Entrepreneurs’ Tour”) carried on throughout the day as Bumiputera entrepreneurs pitched their business plans and proposals to the panel of judges. A total of RM3 million will be awarded among six finalists with the best business models in the automotive industry. The finalists will be announced at the finale in December.
Outside, the massive MotoNation “Transformer Truck” (not Optimus Prime, sadly) was converted to perform as the Main Stage for live performances. Indie bands played throughout the day and OAG made their appearance in the late evening.
A quartet of outrigger-forked custom motorcycles caught the attention of the visitors. They looked like those built by Eastern Bobber.
MotoNation also installed four large pieces of plywood to act as blank canvases for graffiti artists. Better to express their talents in a proper setting rather than being viewed as public eyesore, right?
Down the rows of booths, MotoNation organized fun activities for the entire family, such as an inflatable playground, a place for soap bubbles and fun quizzes.
Corporate booths included Petron who displayed their new range of lubricants;
RWB who specializes in widebody kits for air-cooled Porsche 911 models;
and Treeletrik T-90 electric scooters.
There was also an auto salon for owners to show off the results of their creativity.
F&B services included a whole street full of food trucks.
The MotoNation Roadshow will visit Johor Bharu next on the 16th and 17th November, and will finally be held at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) from 1st to 3rd December 2017.
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