Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 40 i Built

When is a seat not a seat? When it flips out from under the bodywork like a Thunderbird emerging from Tracy Island, that’s when. Behold the Biancaneve built by Dotto Creations: a bike that, were it not for its transverse V-twin, would be barely recognisable as a CX500. Dotto Creations consists of co-founders Francesco Iannuzzi and Gianluca Bartolini, who cut their teeth in the high fashion circles of automotive design; Pininfarina, Italdesign Giugiaro and er, Volvo. I suppose the V70 has a certain hearse-like style… Tired of producing the same work in well-defined limits for other people, the pair got together with the aim of designing a custom bike from a blank sheet of paper that they could build in their workshop near Turin. Biancaneve is their first effort. Like…

Fast stylized cars and custom motorcycles set the tone for Southern California youth culture during the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s and Rick McCloskey was there to document what became a pivotal period in American history. McCloskey’s family had moved from West Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley in 1957 and lived 50 yards from the Van Nuys strip, which had become the epicentre of the cruising culture. He had studied photography at college and aged 26 he started to walk the strip to document what was going on. “Purely by happenstance, I discovered the new resurgence and wonderful energy levels of the evening car culture on Van Nuys Boulevard during the late spring of 1972,” says McCloskey. “Since I had just completed several years of photography as a student,…

Bolt Motorcycles is something of a cultural icon in east London. Founded in 2013, the brand has been a mecca for motorcyclists that shy away from the more commercial ventures nearby. After six years in its current space, time is up, the lease is finished and Bolt is moving on to bigger and better things. In classic fashion, Bolt’s founder Andrew threw a big party to say goodbye, then penned his thoughts for Built on how the scene got to where it is. “The first wave of a revival in custom motorcycle culture had already passed by the time we relaunched in our third space in Stoke Newington, East London. Wheels and Waves had grown from a few hundred friends of friends to thousands of pairs of wheels, cult brand…

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…

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…

There comes a point in all our lives when we must jump in at the deep end. Where you think ‘oh sod it’ and commit. If you’re a rational thinker it could be after a five weeks or months, but if you’re impulsive it could be after five hours or minutes. For Jonathan Hull, a self-confessed “over researcher”, it’s been five years. That’s five years from when he built his first custom bike until it was time to say sod it to teaching secondary school music and move into the garage full time. The Northman is the first fruits of his pro endeavour and by the looks of it, he’s hit a hole in one. “I’ll be honest, I’m sort of here by accident,” admits Jonathan. “A few years ago,…

Malle’s many adventures have featured on these pages a few times over the years. Come to think of it, such has been the success of their two-wheeled endeavours, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re organisers of events first, makers of clothing and luggage second. After a few years of showing riders the best roads the UK has to offer, the two founders (Robert Nightingale and Jonny Cazzola – pictured left) were inspired to dream-up an even bigger challenge: to take dozens of riders on a trip from one end of the Alps to the other. After being initially stalled by Covid restrictions, the pair finally pulled it off in September, safely leading more than 60 machines on an epic 1200-mile, six-day ride from Innsbruck to Monaco. Built was with them…

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;…

New riders are traditionally stuck with bikes that are the opposite of what makes motorcycling any good. In Australia, it’s the Learner Approved Motorcycle (LAM) scheme that makes everyone, regardless of age, start their biking life on a medium to low capacity plodder, but there is hope: Rogue has made a name for itself turning LAMs from frogs into princes. “Rogue was founded about six years ago by Billy Kuijken and his fiancée Silvie in Perth,” says Ben Selboskar, who helps with marketing while working on his apprenticeship. “The motorcycle community here is really growing and there’s a few custom shops. But historically it’s just been big Harleys and stuff like that. WA [Western Australia] has a lot of mines up north, so you get a lot of blokes who…

If you think about it, riding a custom motorycle is a bit, well, odd. In fact, riding a motorcycle at all is rather strange. Sure it probably made sense in 1923, or maybe even 1953, when bikes were cheap and cars were expensive. But that isn’t the case any more, and hasn’t been for ages, so if you ride a bike (especially a custom one) you’re making a decision. A decision to do things differently. To go against the grain. To stick two fingers up to the man. To celebrate an era when a route was drawn on a map and life was as much about the journey as it was the destination. It’s a decision we’ve all made and it’s one the folks at P&Co have made too. “We’ve…