THE Mortagua Fighter is now on its 10th edition, and was present at the Expo Moto 2022 in Spain.
Its creator, Carlos Rodriguez, hails from Mortagua, Portugal, and had built custom bikes for a while before he created the Mortagua Fighter.
The first edition was built in 1995, and by now the looks have completely changed. This is truly one of the most aesthetically radical bikes you can find.
Its latest variant seems like the result of the designers at Project Aces - the developers of the Ace Combat video games - taking one of their fictional fighter jets and sticking a wheel on either end.
There is nothing about the bike that does not look radical, and the same could be said for almost all of the Fighter 10’s nine predecessors. The level of creativity involved in maintaining such a unique range of bikes for almost 30 years now is incomprehensible to an ordinary, uncreative person like the author of this article.
Ordinarily in an article where the bike is the focus, technical things are important, like the horsepower, torque, and the width of the tyres. But none of those really matter here. The sensation this bike gives is given when you are not riding it, but when you are looking at it. Or, I suppose, it is possible that there is a feeling to be obtained from the attention riding such a spectacularly bizarre machine will bring.
But, it is not a bike for the track, nor for pushing the edge on a beautiful mountain road.
It is for riding slowly, through a city or a coastal town, at night, under yellowed artificial light, while people look and scoff at its obnoxiously extreme appearance. It’s fantastic.
Lead image courtesy of Living with Gravity.
