There are two kinds of motorcycles in this world: the ones you buy to pamper, and the ones you buy to ride until they hate you. For Ales Tomis of Earth Motorcycles, his ’94 Honda Dominator NX650 was firmly in the second camp. It carried him for four years, through countless roads and a monster 8,000-plus kilometre trip to Iraq in 2024. By the time he limped it home, overheating, vibrating like a cheap motel bed and wheezing its way behind a friend’s Desert X, Ales knew the truth. “After a near-fatal engine failure in Turkey, I said to my bike: now it is your time to retire.” But in Earth Motorcycles’ language, 'retire' doesn’t mean a quiet life. It means reincarnation.

The original plan was modest: keep it close to stock, maybe a low-end scrambler with the original wheels, tank and air intake. But as any builder will tell you, plans have a funny way of being scrapped at the first spark of an angle grinder. The Dominator’s 21-inch front wheel was the first casualty. Ales swapped it for an 18-inch Moose Racing rim, paired with an Excel 17-inch rear, stainless spokes and a tubeless Pirelli MT combo. “I thought I’d keep it simple, but it just snowballed,” he admits.

If you’ve ever wandered the endless aisles of SEMA, EICMA, or the Tokyo Motorcycle Show, you’ll know the game: no matter how much time you’ve got, you’ll never see it all. Which means the big players need something special to drag you off course and into their stand. Gone are the days when a pretty model would do the trick, these days, it takes real creativity. Japanese riding gear legends HYOD had just the thing in mind. They tapped Deus Ex Machina Tokyo’s head wrench, Tomoyuki Soeda, with one simple brief: build us a showstopper. His answer? A Ducati S2R 1000 that takes the “Monster” moniker literally, a snarling brute of a bike designed to snap necks, steal spotlights, and send small children fleeing for cover.

The HYOD brand might be a new name to many, they are primarily focused on the Japanese market, where they sell a huge range of high-end riding gear, focused on the staples like jackets for all seasons, gloves, pants and a casual clothing range. But they are also master tailors, with their 'Origin Works' factory producing beautiful handmade leather jackets for those who appreciate a fine fit. Then they have a stable of Japan's best racers, for whom they make fully equipped, airbag, race suits. Think master of the rain Ryuichi Kiyonari, who has been a big winner around the world, and the seven-time slayer of the Suzuka 8-hour, Takumi Takahashi. 

BMW barely had time to wipe the fingerprints off its press kit before custom builders started circling the new R12 like vultures. But while plenty have already had a crack, few have taken the scalpel to it quite like France’s speed-obsessed crew at FCR Original. These guys don’t just build bikes, they distil them, stripping away everything but the good stuff before bolting up their own catalogue of drool-worthy custom parts. The result? A factory-fresh R12 reborn as a sharper, leaner, and unapologetically urban machine aimed squarely at a new generation. And make no mistake, this isn’t a one-off. It’s the opening shot in FCR’s all-new BMW R12-based lineup, designed to get riders worldwide wrenching with their range of high-end, plug-and-play goodness.

It's a well-worn path for the French team, sure, they have built full-blown one-off customs and continue to do so, but at the heart of the business is their exceptional catalogue of in-house custom parts. Their core products focus on all of the modern retro machines from Triumph, BMW and Royal Enfield, and you can build your own custom simply by shopping at their online store. And although they have a signature style, every model can be transformed into a range of looks: Urban, Off-Road, Heritage and Cafe Racer.

When Moto Guzzi re-released the V7, we figured it would slide neatly into the custom scene alongside all the other modern retros. But for whatever reason, it never really found its footing. To my mind, any motorcycle sporting a V-twin deserves a tough stance and a bit of menace, and the V7 has always come across as a little too polite. Enter Noel Muller of Australia’s Black Cycles, a man who can make any donor bike look like it’s just been dipped in cool. Handed a battered and bruised V7 III Stone, he’s given it the glorious makeover it’s always deserved, blending masterful craftsmanship with a mean streak that finally gives this Guzzi some proper attitude.

The story of this V7’s transformation starts with drama fit for a Netflix special. Owner Toby, a café owner in New South Wales, had the bike stolen right from outside his business. For a week, it was brazenly ridden around town until a sharp-eyed officer recognised it and engaged in a dramatic chase. Forty-five minutes later, the thief was in handcuffs, the Guzzi was back, and Toby was left with a slightly battered but salvageable motorcycle. The real kicker? The damage from the theft paled in comparison to years of corrosive beachside living.

When a customer sends you a bike halfway across the country, you know the pressure is on. For Spencer Parr of Parr Motorcycles in Indiana, that pressure came wrapped in the form of a tired old 2002 Honda XR650R shipped from Texas. The brief was simple: take Big Red’s desert dominator and turn it into a road-going big bore scrambler, better, sharper, and more refined than his already legendary first XR680R build. Version 2.0 was born, and according to Spencer, it’s his favourite bike to date.

The foundation for this project was laid a few years back, when Spencer’s own 680R scrambler hit social media and turned heads. Word spread fast, and before long, another customer wanted their own take on the big thumper. The donor bike wasn’t showroom fresh, more “sat in a garage a little too long”, but that didn’t matter. Everything non-essential was stripped and stored, leaving only a blank canvas ready to be reimagined.

Some builds start with a sketch. Others begin with a parts list, a slab of beer, and a questionable life decision. For Gold Coast’s own Matty McFerran, this one started with a relentless stream of DMs from a mate, Mark, who 'just wanted a tidy vintage tracker.' But Matty's one hell of a busy guy, with three kids under five, three businesses, including the epic Gold Coast Studio, two half-finished bikes in the shed, and precisely zero hours of spare time. The sensible thing would’ve been to send Mark a few classified links. Instead, Matty blurted out, “How about I just build you one?” Five months later, this 50-year-old Yamaha DT125 was born, and what a bloody little beauty she is!

If the name Matty McFerran rings a bell, that’s probably because you’ve seen him high in the air, upside down, hanging off the bars, with his feet casually dangling off the pegs. The former Nitro Circus freestyle motocross rider has, however, traded aerial antics for camera angles, becoming a highly sought-after photographer in the sports and automotive scenes. It turns out, years spent defying gravity translate pretty well into knowing what looks good and how to brilliantly capture it on film.

For the past decade, when it comes time to select our Top Ten bikes of the year, the creations of Virginia’s Sean Skinner are either right there on the list or narrowly miss the cut — the man simply doesn’t know how to build a bad bike. Once dubbed a “silent achiever,” the MotoRelic mastermind has since made serious waves in the custom scene, thanks to his love for powerful, screaming two-strokes that are impossible to ignore. That’s exactly how his latest client discovered him: after spotting a previous build, he knew he wanted something special of his own. What he delivered to Sean was a battered wreck — but with an open chequebook and total creative freedom, the outcome was bound to be spectacular. Enter the MotoRelic 1973 Yamaha RD350: pure two-stroke perfection that’ll have you hanging on for dear life when it comes on the pipe.

The price of any classic bike is absolutely crazy these days, so it's hard to turn down a bargain when you come across one. But can something be too cheap? “John reached out to talk about letting me create a street tracker out of a barn find RD that he picked up for $350. Normally, getting a bike for $1 a CC is a great deal but when he sent the photos, I feel he overpaid,” Sean laughs. “It was the crustiest, most forgotten bike I'd ever seen. We had a laugh and I told him, if it's not locked up then it will be great since his idea for the build will only require me to keep the frame and engine. Everything else will go to the dumpster. John was prepared to spare no expense on this build, which makes my job way more fun!”

Steve Jobs once said, "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." And few embody that principle better than master builder Marcus Walz. For more than three decades, he has remained at the forefront of the custom motorcycle world through relentless creativity and a drive to push boundaries. The results speak for themselves—one stunning build after another. His latest creation is no exception. Inspired by the Harley-Davidson board track racers of the 1920s, this 1987 BMW R80 Monolever is more than just a head-turner. Dubbed the WalzWerk SCHIZZO® Board Tracker, it hides a serious surprise: genuine Porsche power under the tank.

“I always admired the Harley Board Tracker from the 1920s, one of the most puristic machines ever built. So I wonder how an air cooled BMW board tracker would look like, if this sport would still exist in the 70s and 80s. So I came up with this black and simple machine,” Marcus tells us. But while the lines are sweet and simple, the engineering poured into this motorcycle are anything but, as Walz once again pushes the limits of what can be done with a BMW R series motorcycle. That's not an easy task when you've built more than 700 airheads, but like those racers from a century ago, the pursuit of power can take you in interesting directions. And Marcus has always had a love for his home heroes, in the form of BMW and Porsche.

There is a hell of a lot to think about when you've decided to have a custom motorcycle built; most people first select a donor make and model, before choosing the exact style they'd like to have. Then, of course, there is the budget, which has been the death of many but by far the most important selection you will ever make is who you choose to actually build the bike for you. And few machines prove that point better than this stunning Italian classic, built from the bones of a 1987 Moto Guzzi 850 T5. What you see is the end result, a series of exquisite photos of the completed dream machine, on the grounds of Highcliffe Castle. But to turn that '80s parts bin special into Moto Guzzi 'V85T5', you need a master of the trade, like Pete Hodson of Bournemouth's Side Rock Cycles.

Pete's built more cool customs than most people have had hot dinners, and not only is he incredibly talented on the tools, he's been in the game since the 1970s. So, he has a huge advantage over the rest of us; he was there when many of these donor bikes were actually brand new and released to the public. For a machine like the Guzzi 850 T5, that can be the difference between building a brilliant bike and a terrible one. Because when it was first released in 1983, this is what Motorcycle International had to say, “When a venerable marque prostitutes itself in order to follow trends, the results are inevitably crass and invariably technically compromised.”

Motorcycle manufacturers, if you're listening, we have a word of advice. There is a custom bike builder in Australia who, time and again, has shown he can literally turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Now, in past generations, this might not have been such an in-demand skill; the '60s, for example, were filled with showrooms of beautiful machines. But in a some what back to the future period in time, modern motorcycles are a bit like the '80s, when designers didn't seem to have a handle on how to make new technology fit into a neat package. Enter Noel Muller of Black Cycles Australia, not only is he one of the world's most prolific bike builders, but he never ceases to amaze us with his ability to make any bike look brilliant. And his latest creation is no different, a 1986 BMW K100 RS that is simply a scrambler sensation.

The K series is no stranger to the custom world, as their R series cousins have become rather ridiculously expensive, builders have been turning to the other Bavarian to serve as a donor for all manner of one-off creations. And there are some big positives to the mighty K, that engine will not only run forever, but the smooth power is addictive as hell. But in stock form, they've never been a looker, earning the 'Flying Brick' nickname early in their lifetime. And despite the challenges, many have pulled off some brilliant bikes using them; however, this just might be the most cohesive design and execution we've ever seen.