Cape Town – One of the saddest things about the ‘bobber’ culture sweeping the motorcycle world at the moment is that it promotes – and in fact celebrates – poor standards of finish.
Make no mistake, these are not café racers; few of them run well and fewer still are capable of cornering with the absolute precision needed for racing – at night! – from one truck-stop to the next.
For the first time since Uncle Bunt and Arlen Ness took the custom-bike world by the scruff of its neck in the middle 1960s and imbued it with a sense of pride, scruffy is cool and matt black is the new black. I’ve actually had a custom bike-builder tell me his prize-winning creation was supposed to look unfinished and yes, the rust on the brackets was deliberate.
So it comes as something as a relief to discover a workshop in Cape Town that still builds old-school custom performance machines to concours standards. Owner David Cade calls it Retro Prestige Motorcycles because that sums up in three words his philosophy of life - and of motorcycling, which for him is the same thing.
OLD-SCHOOL STYLING
The bikes are kept simple, the styling old school, the engineering is elegant and the finishes superb. The majority of RPM’s projects thus far have been based on BMW twins from the 1980s because they’re plentiful, they’re reliable and they can be made to handle very nicely without prohibitively expensive componentry.
The R100 RS in the picture is actually Cade’s own bike; it wasn’t built like that to win prizes, it was built – and continues to evolve – that way because that’s the way he likes it. And along the way the shop has evolved as Cade began supplying specialised parts – some imported and some specially made to his designs – to like-minded retro-bike enthusiasts, as well as Davida retro helmets and some of the finest 1960s-style leatherwear on the market.
Then he took it one step further, with an in-house coffee bar where top barista Chris makes what riders who know are calling the best garage coffee in Cape Town, as well as fuel tank-filling sandwiches with suitably bike-themed names.
All of which, he says, is reason enough for a party – and you’re invited, this Saturday, to the first Retro Bike Day, at the workshop in Shropshire Street, Paarden Eiland from 11am until whenever, with live music, burlesque dancers, a fire eater, food and refreshments, a swop meet and prizes for the best retro, flat tracker/bobber and classic motorcycles.
For more information call Hazel on 084 603 1584 or visit the Retro Prestige Motorcycles website .