The Best Custom Motorcycles In The World, July 31st 2014

Welcome to The Week In Bikes, your weekly CliffsNotes version of the best new custom bikes in the world.

Mean Green Customs’ Honda Karizma Cafe Racer “Sliver” 
This is the second week in a row that we’ve featured a bike built in India, and the second week in a row that India has really impressed us with its custom scene. Everything has been modified beyond recognition. Click through to the pics and look at the detail work at play here, and you’ll see nuances like a front spring mounted up by the body to keep it hidden. They’re so focused on the end result, they painted most of their hard work black, so as not to detract from the overall visual appeal of the bike.

Cafe Racer Dreams’ New Beemer
You’ve seen the guys from Spain’s CRD make some utterly stupendous bikes in the past, so it should come as no surprise that they’re scoring a lot more points with this build than the Spanish soccer team did in the entire World Cup. It’s been seriously shortened and dropped about as low as you can get, and all the electronics have been brought up to modern standards. The scary thing is CRD’s starting to make a bike this great seem routine.

H/T: BikeEXIF 

Utopian Customs’ Yamaha DT 250 Crocker Homage 
The guys at Utopian Customs are refreshingly blunt in their assessment of the bikes they make: “Our motorcycles are nostalgic and nonsensical.” Combine that attitude with the philosophical stance that designing a bike is just as fun as riding it, and you’ll start to see how this bike came to be. They wanted to make a somewhat modern homage to a classic Crocker Speedway bike, so they sourced a 1979 Yamaha and got to chopping. It’s a two-cycle motor, which of course leads to plenty of smoke when you rev it, hence the bike’s name: Smoker. 

Smoked Garage’s Honda CB100 “Legend” 
We’re officially jealous: Smoked Garage is based in the Indonesian paradise of Bali. The bike you’re looking at might be named “Legend,” but you’ll never have to wait for it if they’re to be believed about the heavily modified Honda CB100’s acceleration. Legend was built to be ridden all over the island, which means it’s gotta be capable on beaches and up volcanoes, through dense jungles, and in intense two-wheeled traffic.

Jan Sallings’ 1973 Honda 350 Restomod
For the uninitiated, restomodding is the art of restoring a classic vehicle while simultaneously customizing it and keeping its original character intact. Jan Sallings built this one with very little outside assistance and the result is one of the most beautiful old Hondas you’ll ever see. The frame has been cleaned up, of course, and you can clearly see that whatever isn’t a very bright red is bare gleaming metal, but the less obvious touches are what make this bike so brilliant. Those two golden pieces of metal on the exhaust? Heat shields to protect the rider from otherwise inevitably burned legs.

H/T: BikeEXIF


Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He suddenly finds himself wanting to ride a custom Honda up a beach in Bali.