Is it for real or is he acting? That’s the first question that goes through someone’s head when hearing about Justin Timberlake mounting and riding a custom Harley-Davidson motorcycle. But it’s for real. The 28-year-old celebrity was pictured as a Harley bad boy just yesterday after lunching at Italian restaurant Cafe Med in Los Angeles. He was also wearing a very shiny half-helmet and a jacket from his fashion label, William Rast.
Orange County Choppers was commissioned by Siemens to build an entirely electric motorcycle in order to raise environmental awareness. Given the New York-based custom motorcycle builder’s tradition of building noisy and very spectacular choppers powered by a good old V-Twin engine, Siemens’s proposition might have sounded a bit unusual at first, but it was a challenge waiting to be taken.
The end result was unveiled yesterday at the Time Warner Center by Siemens and Paul Teutul Senior itself and we must say that it looks as good as any other OCC creation so far, if not even better, given the futuristic tendency.
But while the looks aspect is discussable, the incontestable fact is that the 27-horsepower electric motor from Advanced DC powers the Siemens electric chopper to a 100+ mph top speed. The six batteries take five hours to charge and supply the bike with electricity for around 60 miles, which is quite decent.
OCC built the Siemens bike in a single month and it is all on tape and scheduled to air on TLC on Thursday, October 22 at 9PM.
Siemens plans to take their bike on a worldwide tour in 2010 and then auction it and donate the money to "a charitable cause that will help benefit the environment." Yes, that means you can even end up owning it if you’re a man with deep pockets and the fact that OCC says that it currently has no plans to mass produce an electric chopper until demand is here, makes this creation even more unique.
See a video from the event and read the Siemens press release after the break.
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This year’s Official World Championship of Custom Bike Building - held every year since 2004 during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, every August, in the Black Hills of South Dakota - was won for the first time by an American.
Dave Cook is a custom motorcycle engineer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He runs Cook Custom Choopers and the Rambler is the bike that brought him the highest success in his career. The bike is powered by an air-cooled 550cc four-cylinder engine from International, meaning that V-Twins have gone out of fashion when it comes to high awards.
Kris Krome Customs of Freeland, Michigan won second place with the bike called Re-flex-tion and which was built around a Triumph T120 motor, while third place went to Krugger Speedshop from Belgium. The Overmile bike and its S&S engine made quite an impression as well.
Hit the jump for the press release and picture gallery of the winning bikes.
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Actor Lorenzo Lamas, best known by the motorcycle world thanks to the Renegade series from the 1990s, has teamed up with Ralph Randolph of Knockout Motorcycles to form a new motorcycle company named Lorenzo Lamas Cycles.
Master builder Ralph Randolph will make possible the designs imagined by Lamas and the bikes build by LLC will be based on production frames and will reportedly be powered by Twin Cam engines from S&S.
Four motorcycle renderings have already been released and you can check them out in our photo gallery. Cool, huh? Even cooler is the fact that the Reno Rocket and the Badlands Bomber will make their public debut this week at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Brad Pitt needs no presentation, neither as a Hollywood actor nor as a motorcyclist, but his latest ride is well worth checking out. This hand-built custom cruiser powered by a Harley-Davidson V-twin engine comes to complete the actor’s classic and hand-built motorcycles collection with an original new look.
The glossy bodywork doesn’t include a seat, the custom rear wheel wrapped in a fat tyre is stood out thanks to a single-sided swingarm and the tail reminds more of a café racer rather than a chopper.
This quick shot of Brad’s new ride doesn’t catch the front end, but we reckon it’s as good (if not better) as the rear. We sure hope he rides the bike soon so that we can update this post.
Polish vehicle manufacturer Marotti has created a rather unique reverse-trike that is claimed to be "as dynamic as a motorcycle and, at the same time, as safe and easy to drive as a car." While the engine powering it was easy to procure from a Honda VFR750, the design sure gave a few headaches. Built as a fighter jet to hit the streets, this Marotti creation is, obviously, inspired from the aeronautic industry.
Given the 100 horsepower developed by the 750cc V-four engine and the only 970-pounds weight, the machine does quality as a blast, at least on paper. If you’re willing to see the facts, hit the jump and check out the no less than four videos that we’ve attached. Guess what? They all prove that this Marotti is built for pure fast launches, which translate in burnouts when space is limited.
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This
Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 has undergone a serious transformation so that it will delight an owner clearly passionate of Egypt’s glory days and, of course, motorcycling. Ancient looks meet modern technology on this not to be missed long haul sports motorcycle spotted on the streets of Australia.
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Gregg’s Customs and Jon Reed of Sport Chrome have modified this unique Suzuki Hayabusa to resemble its smaller GSX-R siblings by mounting a completely new tail section on a subframe made in-house. The custom unit will become available from Gregg’s Customs in the future and will allow owners to enhance the sporty looks of their high performance bikes.
Named the Rockstar Hayabusa, this custom doesn’t feature turbos, nitrous and not even chrome (like most custom Hayabusas do), showing how the customization process should be based on originality and resourcefulness, not necessarily on fitting a Busa with the most expensive performance parts and simply chrome the bodywork instead of going for an immediately recognizable paintjob. Way to go on this one!
The bike is currently for sale on eBay, so if you have the same opinion about it as us + financial resources ($10,100), it might just be the one for you.
If all the kids that grew up to become motorcyclists had a rocking metal horse in their early years of life, at least parents would know where they did “wrong”.
This rocking motorcycle was built by Felix Götze, who used parts from old german motorbikes. This makes the thing reliable and, together with the resistant frame, it is sure to put a smile on many generations of little faces in one happy family. The first in line is Otto Komei, a three-year-old who enjoys watching the neighbors working on their bikes. Sitting on this rocking motorcycle, at least he’ll feel connected to their activity until he is old enough to join the club and finally let mom and dad realize what they encouraged him to do.
The seat is an old style unit and looks highly resistant to…diaper
content (is it true that they don’t wear those after two years or so?). Also, the headlight and instruments have been properly sealed so that the inevitable drool won’t mess things up when the lucky kid admires the pinstripe from German airbrush-artist Thomas Weber.
The rocking bike was built in educational purposes as well. “Powered” by a single-cylinder, two-stroke engine with 150 cc, it teaches the little fellow to start with small steps in life.
Roaring Toyz has just finished customizing this Suzuki GSX-R 1000 for Mat Mladin! Does the name sound familiar to you? Mat Mladin is the winner of six titles in the AMA Superbike Championship and the recent founder of Bike Gear Warehouse Company, which is also the reason why he ordered this custom made motorcycle.
The Suzuki GSX-R 1000 K9 by Roaring Toyz will be officially unveiled in two days at Laguna Seca and it will then start a promoting tour for the newly born company on all the tracks where AMA Superbike rounds are planned. The bike will then be taken to Australia (Mladin’s home country), where it will be used to promote Bike Gear Warehouse in their job of distributing Roaring Toyz custom sportbike parts.
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