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Cafe racer3/30/2023 ![]() The Norton Manx is as close to legitimate factory cafe racer as one can get or you can save a little dough and scoop up a Triumph Trident or a Bonneville for a quick build.īuilding a cafe racer is more about finding a suitable frame and engine that requires minimal modification. If you’re looking to pay a premium, you could always go British for a true cafe racer. Kawasaki’s W650 and W800 make great donor bikes and are the more modern of the list, with Kawasaki reviving the W800.īMW has the R series that varies in engine displacement to suit any kind of build. Another donor bike from Yamaha would be the Virago. Looking for a Yamaha donor bike? The XS series has a huge aftermarket support system that should make chopping it into a cafe racer dead simple. Harder to find, but with an interesting engine configuration, is the Honda CX500. The CB500, 550, and 750 are the most coveted and you’ll probably pay the top dollar for any of them. These models were sold during the ’70s and ’80s and can be found on most CraigsList and marketplace-type communities. One of the most popular-and easier to find-models is a Honda CB. If you’re of the belief that it is better to build than to buy, there are a number of popular motorcycle models that you can turn some wrenches and transform into a cafe racer. Most of these brands still continue to produce cafe racer variants of their motorcycle models, including manufacturers like Ducati, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Husqvarna. Most of these featured the common cafe racer styling, without any increase to performance over their standard motorcycle counterparts. During the latter half of the ’70s, BMW, Honda, Moto Guzzi, and even Harley-Davidson built factory cafe racer models. As the motorcycle market expanded globally, Japanese motorcycles began their takeover of the factory cafe segment in the 1970s. It was common to see multiple bikes parked outside of cafes like the Busy Bee and Ace Cafe in London.ĭuring the 1960s, the cafe racer was almost exclusively a British-made motorcycle: Norton, Triumph, and BSA. ![]() ![]() Wallace Wyss, the famed American automotive writer and advertising consultant, stated that the term cafe racer should be attributed to a "motorcyclist who played at being an Isle of Man road racer" but was actually "someone who owned a racy machine but merely parked it near his table at the local outdoor cafe.” He was not entirely wrong because the Rockers of 1960 London used these modded motorcycles to race on England’s burgeoning highway system, to get from cafe to cafe as fast as they could. Pictured: One of the factory cafe racer models that Ducati has made, this being a 2001 MH900e. ![]()
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