Top 10 wildest custom bikes ever built

We bring you the most unbelievable bike-art from designers around the world

Prepare to be amazed. This is our Top 10 chosen from the entries of the AMD World Championship custom bike building competition.

With designs from around the world, the finals were held in Sturgis in September and showcased the phenomenal talents and design creativity of the best bike builders around the globe. These guys aren’t TV luvvies with over-inflated egos and stupid moustaches, they are the men who sweat blood and tears to create moving masterpieces of motorcycle art...

Click next to begin the countdown of the Top 10 Wildest customs

Article link: Visordown custom bike reviews

10. Proto Slug

10. Proto Slug

Fred Duban
Country: France
Cost: £220,000
Time to build: 1 year

Specs

Engine: 2200cc Merch
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: Radial Beringer
Wheels: Dub
Power: 130bhp

Dub-performance.com

My main priority when building custom bikes is making them rideable, and if they happen to be fast then even better! This bike is the prototype for a series of 12 Slug bikes, hence its name. I’m aiming to make the rest available to buy in either a higher or lower specification, depending on what the customer wants. I reckon the production bikes will cost around £44,000, making them more affordable but with the same quality and unlimited range of options.

The bike was influenced by everything I like in motorcycles. I like Ducatis, MotoGP, the new VMAX and even motocross bikes, I also wanted to prove to the Americans that France is not just a country of wine and cheese. The Slug took about a year to make; I found building a sportsbike with a big V-twin engine very difficult because of the size of the motor, however I think I have found a good balance between look and function. It has the ‘Dub’ touch, and it works. When you open the throttle the sensations are just whooo… The Slug makes over 130bhp and it’s difficult to use the throttle wide open, especially as the bike is very light. I think for production bikes it’s too much, but if a customer wants something scary I can do that - with pleasure! And I would probably use a 180 section rear tyre, this bike has a 300-section, a smaller tyre would make the bike handle better but the Americans like their fat rears...

09. Ren Star

09. Ren Star

Roland Sands
Country: USA
Cost: £80,000
Time to build: 3 months

Specs

Engine: 110Cl Road Star
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: PM Judge
Wheels: RSD Contrast
Power: 110bhp

Rolandsands.com

I tried to chuck a few different styles in there with the Ren Star, it’s a combo of flat track with a little bit of road race thrown in as well, I wanted to mix things up. One of the main styling points is the gas tank, I tried to build a really cool one that was chopped up, flat at the sides, and really reminiscent of the old café racers.

My background is road racing and I design all my bikes to be ridden hard, they are there to have fun on, not just look pretty. For me this is the one factor that sets me aside from most of the other custom builders, I’m not saying they don’t do rideable stuff, but mine is on a different level. For example in 2003 I started putting Öhlins forks and radially mounted brakes on all my bikes to give them better performance and handling, and I don’t subscribe to the large rear wheel philosophy. Although I’ve done some big wheel stuff I don’t go over 240-section. Yeah, some people like it and enjoy that look, but it doesn’t do any favours for the handling, on my own bikes I don’t go over 180-section usually.

Thinking about it, you know what really annoys me with the Ren Star? The swingarm was a total experiment, we had never made one out of bent plate before. I really wanted to capture that R6 or R1 style swingarm as the bike is sporty, so we built it from scratch, then everyone thought we has just used a stock R1 swingarm! Shoot, we put all that time and effort into it and because we ended up doing such a good job people just thought it was made in Japan! That sucked.

08. Harrier

08. Harrier

Stellan Egeland
Country: Sweden
Cost: £60,000
Time to build: 5 months

Specs

Engine: HP2 Sport
Chassis: ISR Hub steer
Brakes: ISR Custom
Wheels: HP2 Sport
Power: 130bhp

SEService.se

I made my name building old style bikes, then a few years ago I saw the Confederate Wraith and it made me want to try and build a modern machine. Then I saw the BMW HP2 Sport at a Swedish trade show and I thought it was really amazing and for the first time I felt the Boxer engine was cool, usually they are too ‘old man’ for me. This worked out well because I have always been interested in hub-steering and it suits the Boxer motor as it is wide and you can mount the bike’s front end and suspension to the engine so you don’t need a frame. I think with a smaller engine such as a Ducati the front swingarm looks ugly when the rest of the bike is so slim, luckily the Boxer is wide.

A company called ISR helped me build the hub-steering, my skills are building frames, sheet metal work and things like that, I’m not a machinist. They were fantastic and made the hub and geometry and it works really well. Although the bike isn’t 100% road legal I ride it on the road using the old BMW licence plate. It runs really good with those plates! On the road it is fantastic, my daughter makes me pick her up from school on it, she loves going on the bike and forces me to take her out all the time. I have also taken it on the track and a professional rider has helped us set it up. The bike will be completely legal very soon, and then I will use it as my own bike. I had better get it done soon, last week the police pulled me over, luckily they didn’t understand what they were looking at and didn’t want to ask questions as they would look stupid!

07. Re-flex-tion

07. Re-flex-tion

Kris Krome
Country: USA
Cost: £250,000
Time to build: 23 days

Specs

Engine: Triumph T120
Chassis: Stainless steel
Brakes: Jay brake
Wheels: Custom
Power: 49bhp

KrisKrome.com

With the Re-flex-tion the idea was to inspire the motorcycle industry in general. It’s completely different to anything before, but is fully usable and rideable. The bike has been on the drawing board for some time as we have been progressing the articulating design for a while now as we believe it will open up a whole new doorway to how a motorcycle can function.

Re-flex-tion has two pivot points and essentially has a very long rake but a small trail, we moved the bike’s geometry to a different location on the motorcycle, the actual ride and functionality is the same, it just gives a very unique feel. This concept gives you so many new directions for frame building and motorcycle design, and it rides well. This bike gets ridden on the road and at low speed it feels a lot like a chopper, but at high speed it has a very natural motion, you quickly get used to it and it feels part of your body when you ride. I think it adds a whole new level of performance to a bike.

Believe it or not we built this bike in 23 days, start to finish. We started with stainless steel straight tubing and polished aluminium and 23 days later took it to Sturgis. There is no chrome on the bike, just polished metal, we were working 20-hour days to get it done. The engine is off a 1970 Triumph Bonneville, we thought as it was the 50th anniversary of the Bonnie it would be a fitting tribute to use it in the bike.

06. Ventidue

06. Ventidue

Luciano Andreoli
Country: Italy
Cost: £60,000
Time to build: 8 months

Specs

Engine: S&S 93
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: Drum
Wheels: Andreoli
Power: 94bhp

AndreoliMotorcycles.it

I do not think too hard about the styling of my bikes. I consider them the products of my imagination, they are concepts and ideas that come into my mind on a sleepless night when my imagination is running wild. Because of this I would not say that I particularly look around for inspiration or influences, I simply create what comes up in my mind and hopefully people will like my ideas.

I have been building custom bikes on my own now for 13 years and the Ventidue was my hardest yet. Each new bike I build I try and push myself to improve and create new ideas and technical challenges. But I have to work around our business – we also repair bikes as well as creating them from scratch – so it was very hard to find the time to build the Ventidue as I had to fit in around all the other work in our garage. Although it looks wild, the bike works, I have ridden it for several magazine photo shoots and it was a lot of fun to ride. Although it takes a lot of cleaning once it has been taken off-road!

05. Lucky 7

05. Lucky 7

John Levey
Country: USA
Cost: £120,000
Time to build: 1 year

Specs

Engine: Rotec R2800
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: PM
Wheels: Ride Wright
Power: 160lbs/ft

JRLCycles.com

I went to school to work on aeroplanes way back in the late 1980s and when I saw the rotary engine the first thing that popped into my head was ‘wouldn’t it be neat to put that in a motorcycle.’ I have no idea where that came from, I wasn’t into custom bikes back then, but it sort of all came together. My brother actually designs custom bikes and when I told him about my idea he said it would never work, but in 2004 he saw things my way and a year later we built it. We actually designed Lucky 7 on a napkin at Sturgis and a year later rode it there. It turned out better than I thought, it looks right and runs well. It’s definitely rideable day-to-day, the motor runs really well and has loads of torque. You don’t need to rev it over 4,000rpm, it pulls like crazy, and surprisingly has very little vibration. And it sounds amazing, a really low rumble when you rev it up.

We are custom building the bike now and have four on the go, which will take us about a year to make. Pilots who are riders love them, a radial in the airplane world is like a Knucklehead to the Harley rider, and anyway it’s nothing new, there was a radial engined motorcycle in the late 1890s, I guess we are part of the revival!

Although this bike uses a 2,800cc seven cylinder motor, the company also does a nine cylinder and I’m working on a bike with that now, I think it’s a nicer looking motor…”

04. Snatch

04. Snatch

Satya Kraus
Country: USA
Cost: £50,000
Time to build: 4 months

Specs

Engine: Shovelhead/Evo
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: Brembo four pot
Wheels: Alpina
Power: 100bhp

KrausMotorCo.com

When I designed Snatch we had been in the custom scene for a couple of years and I felt a lot of the bikes out there were unusable and unrideable, done for looks alone, so I decided to go in a different direction. I wanted to build something that looked fun to ride and would inspire people to get out and ride aggressively. I come from a dirt bike background and I wanted to work some of that styling in, but I love vintage bikes like Triumphs and Nortons, so I took their frame lines and built them into Snatch. I also tried to keep it minimal.

When you start piling on a load of sheet metal work you lose some of the raw essence of the motorcycle; a bike should have enough to go down the road fast but no more. I carried this theme through to the finish. The tank is raw aluminium while the frame is finished in bronze. There is no paint, it’s all metal and the bronze is a coating that I polished back. I wanted an old rigid style swingarm because it looks so simple, but I live in an area with terrible roads. Snatch has two fully-adjustable shocks on the swingarm from a mini motocross bike and they make the bike really nice to ride. I also love the engine. We cut down its fins to show off the bronzed push-rods and gave the cylinders a rounded style for an old drag bike look to make the bike appear more vintage. There are a lot of neat small details on Snatch. I like to design bikes that way, they are built for people who are interested and take the time to look.

03. Speed Junky

03. Speed Junky

Tobias Guckel
Country: Germany
Cost: £200,000
Build time: 6 weeks

Specs

Engine: Indian
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: TGS Cycles
Wheels: TGS Cycles
Power: 96bhp

TGS-Motorcycles.de

I build my bikes around various racing themes and Speed Junky is the third in a series of Seppster bikes that started with a boardtrack racer and also includes an ice racer replica.

I think it sets new standards for custom bikes, no one has built a bike like it before and no one has used a single sided front fork design, it sets new rules and norms and is an activation for the custom bikes world. It was not easy to make, I had to find the right balance with Speed Junky. I needed to get the correct mixture between efficient technical ability and staggering and extreme looks.

I was also under a lot of pressure because I had to get it completed in time for the show. Although I’ve been quite successful on the European custom bike building scene, Speed Junky is the first bike I have taken outside Europe and entered into a competition against the best in the world. I was ranked 9th overall in the AMD freestyle class, which I am very happy with, but I also won the Rat’s Hole show at Sturgis. People ask why the extreme choice of colours but the answer is simple – in the 1990s I saw a picture of the Skoal Bandit Suzuki GSX-R750s and I just loved the green and white colours. At the time I said I would build a bike with those exact colours. 17 years later I did with Speed Junky. Just took a bit longer than planned!

02. Bender

02. Bender

Dmitry Motkov
Country: Russia
Cost: £130,000
Build time: 3 years

Specs

Engine: Revtec 100Cl
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: Rear sprocket
Wheels: Ricks
Power: 105bhp

FCM-Moto.ru

People are surprised to hear it but the Russian custom bike building scene is getting pretty big. There were 39 bikes entered in the Moscow Custom and Tuning Show in April and we are seeing more and more builders appearing every year. The competition is very good, but I won the show and was asked to take Bender to America which was a dream come true as the AMD show was its inspiration. I started building Bender in 2006 when I saw the bikes entered in that year’s AMD Championship. I was inspired to build a beautiful bike and take it to America, which three years later I succeeded in doing.

Unfortunately we didn’t win, but I am still very proud of the bike. People ask me why it is so black, but I chose to keep its design very dark because Fine Custom Mechanic’s company colours are black and steel. Anyway, I like the dark look, it is very Russian.

01. Black Beauty

01. Black Beauty

Roland Sands
Country: USA
Cost: £100,000
Build time: 4 months

Specs

Engine: HD 95Cl
Chassis: Tubular steel
Brakes: PM
Wheels: PM Assault
Power: 90bhp

RolandSands.com

With Black Beauty I wanted to build a core chopper, but with the function and performance that I try to put into a lot of my bikes. Although we kept the stock Harley geometry we added inverted forks, lightweight wheels and a new swingarm so the bike would steer really quickly. Basically we just looked at a Harley and decided to lighten it up as much as possible using top quality components.

I decided on the singlesided swingarm design as it looks sportbike styled and I thought it would be cool to give Black Beauty an old chopper look with the high bars yet still utilise that road race style back end, it turned out really nice and we even managed to keep the tyre size down to a 200-section to retain the handling. The front wheel is the standard Harley 21-inch diameter, which turned out to be a bit of a problem as no one makes a 21-inch slick tyre, luckily I know a few people in Dunlop who helped me out.

I’ve ridden the bike a few times and it rides amazingly, a great working bike. It’s one of the best handling stock Harley-Davidsons I’ve ever ridden, it’s docile but turns really well as the wheels are so light. It’s a proper handling chopper; sure, I’ve built sportsbikes that handle better, but you can’t get a chopper to steer much better than Black Beauty.

One part I have ended up really liking on the bike are the bars. They have a cool gold leaf finish. I wasn’t too sure about it at first but it turned out pretty good, I find that quite a lot. With most of my builds I throw something in there that I’m not 100% sure about. It seems to work about 70% of the time. I reckon that’s a pretty good track record.

Article link: Visordown custom bike reviews