56 MOTO C50

It’s not often that ‘peds get featured in the shed, but some have a place; after all, we ‘re all about bikes, customising and going your own way. This is Toms ride; he’s the main man at 56 Motorcycles, a young Parisian garage based in the centre of Paris.

There’s a sensibility with scooters, but this one has had a little madness thrown its way, which isn’t a huge surprise when you realise Tom isn’t pure French; he’s part Ozzy… now it all makes sense!

Tom has been a fan of small capacity Honda’s for nearly 3 decades and had his fair share of horizontal engined mini bikes, but with a mini bike, you get mini wheels; Tom fancied a big wheel bike; you know… like a grown up.

This is where Tom fits into our category, he tells us that he hates the stock look of a bike and always feels the need to customise. When your donor bike is a C50 though, there’s not much there to start with and you can’t go bolting bits on…. the 49cc’s need a fighting chance. So Tom set about stripping her down, he ditched the fairing and the ‘sofa’ comfy seat, as well as the original lights, bars and instruments.

Once down to the bare bones the ‘ped received a lovely retro tone paint job, an engine clean up and paint, along with a few choice upgrades, mainly a beefier set of rear shocks and a Keihn Carburettor with pod filter.

The Original seat has been replaced with a little pancake pad with cross stitching and a hole for access to the fuel cap; handlebars look purposeful and are from a downhill mountain bike, they have grips and a throttle attached to them… that’s right; no switches here, not even a front brake, so we don’t need to ask if it does skids, I think they were a large part of its design!

A hot-rod style headlamp protrudes ahead of the original C50 number plaque, the rear gets a micro tail light attached to one of the shocks, whilst the license plate is located on the opposite side. The rear fender has been shortened, this gives better clearance for all the mud to ping out and off of those knobbly tyres, after all we’re sure Tom will spend most of his time hacking around the woods on this little BMX’d ‘ped, probably doing skids and jumps like all the cool kids.

Thanks for sharing Tom, we look forward to seeing more light weight, light hearted and fun filled bikes from 56 Moto’s. To keep a track on what the guys are doing, check out their Facebook page.

Photos are by the talented David Marvier.