Irish Guzzi takes top honours at AMD World Custom Bike Championships

122 of the world’s finest custom bikes were on display last weekend as the 10th annual AMD World Custom Bike Championships kicked off in Essen, Germany.

23 countries were represented in the five competition classes with motorcycles, scooters and sidecars all vying for the top prizes.

Of the 66 bikes in the Freestyle class, (where pretty much anything goes) the top award was taken by Medaza Cycles’ Rondine. Don Cronin and Michael O’Shea, the two Irishmen responsible for the build, created a one-off frame to carry the single-cylinder, 1971 Moto Guzzi Nuovo Falcone 500 engine. They were also responsible for hand-forming the aluminium bodywork and the heavily modified V-Rod swingarm, which is used as a girder style front fork. The bike previously took top honours at the 2013 Irish Motorcycle and Scooter show in Dublin.

Laurent Dutruel originally built Tribute to Hagakure to take to Bonneville and compete with during Speed Week. Although there is no official record for a fully rigid bike, Laurent took his bicycle style inspired, Buell engined machine to 208kph (130mph) on the salt, and he has now followed that achievement with the motorcycle taking second place in the Freestyle class.

Pete Pearson, of Rocket Bobs in the UK, describes his third placed freestyle bike, Gas’d Rat, as “A rocket bobber built from a Harley Shovel engined, fully redesigned, re-engineered and fabricated FXS frame.”

In a first for the Championship, a Taiwanese builder took a class win when Winston Yeh, of Rough Crafts, lifted the trophy in the Modified Harley class for his all black, Sportster-based Stealth Bullet, which featured a carbon petrol tank and an oil-in-frame conversion.

Claiming the win for Italy in the Retro Modified class was Inglourious Basterds Cycles with Bastarda Senza Gloria a ‘48/’79 Pan/FX Shovel engined special fitted with the company’s own adjustable Springer front end.

Laurent Dutruel was called to the stage a second time when his turbo charged XR1200 was named the winner of the Street Performance class. Laurent now plans to ship the bike to the US in the summer so that he can ride from San Francisco to the Bonneville Salt Flats and once there attempt to set a record on the bike in the 1350 M-PBG class.

Completing the line-up of winners was Second City Customs from the UK, whose bike The Naughty Gentleman took S&S Cycle’s recognition award in the Production Manufacturer class.

Next year the 11th Annual World AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building will again be staged at the Big Bike Europe expo at Essen, Germany, 4 weeks earlier on April 11 to 13. New for 2014 will be a cafe racer World Champion class.

Get behind the scenes of a custom bike build at MCN-TV.com – watch The Harbortown Bobber for free with our 14-day trial, and follow the ground-up build of Scott DiLalla’s ’69 bobber as various back yard masters put their hands on it, creating a unique custom motorcycle, showing their techniques and telling their own personal stories along the way. Enter the code TV TRIAL at MCN-TV.com

http://mcn-tv.com/video.jsp?c=1&videoId=23