Café Racers en Continent

The 2019 Café Racer Festival at Montlhéry was the seventh iteration of this event and it keeps getting better, says Ian Woolley. It is a magical melange of motorcycles, music, and track rides… Motorcycles come from many genres, many generations and include modern manufactures who bring fleets of their latest offerings for you to try during accompanied test rides. Brilliant…

Café Racer Montlhéry Festival

Hardcore classic bike enthusiasts, 21st century café racer aficionados and retro roadster riders converge on the historic Montlhéry circuit to make the most of the massive café racer festival. Frank Melling took his own Manx Norton along to ride in the wheeltracks of champions… Battling down the Paris-Orleans expressway, nose to tail with kamikaze French commuters, there is no sense…

Custom Classics

Cut-back bobbers and café racers have become a common sight on the classic bike scene, with key styling cues being adopted by mainstream manufacturers. Which means the modified bikes are going to even greater extremes. Bob Pickett argues that it is possible to over-egg this particular pudding. Cat, meet pigeons… Bike Shed’ s annual custom show is held at Tobacco…

Triumph Trident Café Racer

If you want to strip down a Hinckley triple to reveal its raw power, then you can buy special café racer kits where someone else has planned the build and sourced the components on your behalf. Or you can make it up as you go along – and create something completely unique at minimal expense… In the early 1990s legislation…

Honda Black Bomber

In 1968 Soichiro Honda rode his firm’s 10 millionth motorcycle off the production line. That bike was the ground-breaking CB450 Black Bomber – notable not least for its use of novel valvegear with torsion-bars ‘springs’ in its top end. It wasn’t long before racers transformed the CB streetbike into a world class competitor, and the Drixton Honda was born. They’re…

Wheels & Waves

Mix together motorcycles, music and all manner of laid-back leisure activities. Locate the resulting five-day festival on the French / Spanish border, and you’ve got a recipe for success. So says Ian Woolley, who had a whale of a time… This year’s W&W event was the sixth, although in many ways ‘event’ is too small a word for this multifaceted…