Over the past 17 years, some of my favorite custom bike photo features we’ve run in Cafe Racer magazine have focused on motorcycles no one would ever suspect of making great canvasses for modification. The brilliantly conceived Suzuki bandit designed and built by Upstate, New York’s BCP Customs is just such a machine. The sleek, blue and silver road rocket has been subject to numerous one-of-a-kind alterations that manage to completely alter the bike’s overall appearance while improving on the already formidable performance of this mid-sized Japanese inline four.
Among the many challenges inherent in tackling a ask of this magnitude is the sheer absence of bolt-on parts available for a Suzuki bandit 600. This is no classic Honda CB750 where cafe racer bits are common enough that building a complete, restored custom is simply a matter of clicking on a website and wrenching for a few hours. Instead, chief builder Ken Murray was charged with hand-crafting all the necessary pieces- from adapting a BMW R9T seat and cowl to cutting and re-welding the frame- to make this show-winning machine a reality. We particularly dig the clever approach to mounting said seat unit to a frame not designed for a stock BMW part: Ken and crew attached the saddle using a pair of extra-strong, rare-earth magnets. These tough-to-dislodge magnets are cheap and readily available and can easily solve the problem of how to mount custom bodywork to a motorcycle when you don’t have a machine shop available to fabricate one-off brackets and mounts.
There’s been much debate about just what era, brands and engine configurations make for a “true” cafe racer, but after reading about BCP’s creative process and their performance goals, it’s clear that modern (or classic) cafe racers have no set boundaries. It’s a game where innovative thinking and unique approaches to mechanical problem-solving are what really matters.
Read more in Cafe Racer magazine’s February/March issue, on sale now.