COVID-19 couldn’t stop the annual Yamaha Yard Built custom motorcycle competition, as 2020 saw another stunning group of entries.
This year saw custom houses and bike builders using the XSR700 as the base for their builds. What did change for this year was the way the bikes were designed. You may remember back in March this year, seems like yesterday, we can a news article on the Yard Built ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ design competition. Yamaha opened the competition up to the general public, allowing the reader to dream up the bikes that would be built. From there, a team of expert custom motorcycle builders sent over the entries to select the winning designs. These were sent out to the custom builders taking part and a custom motorcycle is born!
Yamaha XSR 700 XTribute 2019 Review
Out of all the entries, Yamaha top brass and the team of judges came down to four motorcycles they couldn’t choose between, so all four were crowned as winners.
Here they are in detail…
“XSR700 Red Tail” built by Café Racer SSpirit
The Red Tail is a look back at Yamaha’s flat track racing glory days. Spanish entrants Alex & Claudio Monge designed the eye-catching Red Tail, using a stylised speed block type paint scheme that seems to run down the seat unit of the bike. With the bike’s stock lightweight steel ‘backbone’ frame and chassis intact, the Monge’s were passionate about the simple brief of being able to make big modifications to the iconic Sport Heritage XSR700 without cuts or welds.
“RD350 Tribute” built by Garage221
With dreams of his own custom Yamaha, Italian entrant and XSR700 owner Ugo Coppola projected his vision of a road-going dirt track bike onto the Sport Heritage. The RD350 Tribute retains the bike’s lightweight steel ‘backbone’ frame and chassis as standard, with the designer instead turning to OEM parts from various modern Yamaha models to blend cutting-edge motorcycle design with the RD350’s heritage.
“Disruptive” built by Bad Winners
Disruptive comes from the mind of French entrant, Barbara Motorcycle with the build being completed by Bad Winners. The bike is an aggressively designed black and gold machine that again echoes flat track bikes from Yamaha’s past. The bike is a mixture of genuine Yamaha and custom-built and designed parts, with the fuel tank being the most obvious and eye-catching piece of design.
“700GT” built by Rua Machines
The 700GT is one of the more oddball designs from the competition, and it’s the one we aren’t completely sold on. It was designed by Tony Queiros, and we can only guess that he’s a big fan og the Harley-Davidson Street Rod! The design is claimed to be based on his father XJ400, although, I’m not sure I see it. Anyway, nice try Tony!
