BELGIUM'S BIGGEST OLD BIKE JUMBLE

Moto Retro Wieze next edition 9 & 10 february 2013. Special café racers exhibit.

Old motor bikes,  yellow stained manuals, shiny head-lights? Enthusiastic collectors of old motorbikes and accessories. You can find it all at Moto Retro. Sell or exhange. Just for the fun, the excitement and the smell of nostalgia. Or are you looking for that one missing part. And perhaps you might want to buy the old motorbike you always dreamt of. Moto Retro is the place to be. Each year thousands visit the old motorbike jumble for its atmosphere and the encounters with the genuine die-hards.
 

THE KITTEN : 2008 HONDA CRF230

Back in 2008, when gas was close to four bucks a gallon, people got scared… people got real scared. Would this mean the end of bikes as we know them? Is it time to buy an electric? Should we move to Canada? Some of us went so far as to downsize our daily rider just to save a few pennies for Friday whiskey drinks at Slabtown. Others just downsized our wife’s rides so they could continue on in 1100cc bliss. Enter the Kitten. Purchased new by an Icon employee to replace his wife’s Suburban as the family grocery getter, it only took a long winter and a little time on E-bay before it faced the inevitable grinder. Chopped, ground, and sawed within scant inches of permanent regret – the CRF230 began to take it’s final form. 18″ hoops were laced in where appropriate. Exhaust tubes were rerouted and reconfigured for maximum glass packed virility. Gas tanks were sourced, mounted, sourced again, remounted, and sourced thricely. It was all a very involved and technically recumbent challenge. But Icon emerged victorious with a wholly underpowered but visually overwhelming result – ala ‘The Kitten’. Mess with the Kitten and you’ll get the horn.

Air Drive: Floating Classics by Renaud Marion

This 300SL Roadster, photographed and enhanced by French photographer Renaud Marion in a new study called ‘Air Drive’, recalls the floating spaceships from the animated series ‘The Jetsons’, produced in the 60s by American animation studio Hanna-Barbera.

Marion, who plays on the child-like assumption that cars of the future would fly, shows his vision of how these vehicles might appear. The images of floating classics are given a charming twist, as they marry the past with the future. The photographer used a series of classic cars to augment his vision, including two Mercedes-Benzes, a Jaguar XK and a Cadillac STS. 

Related Links The work of the photographer Renaud Marion can be found at www.renaudmarion.com Although we don’t currently have any floating classics in the Classic Driver Marketplace, do see our latest 200 cars

Text: J. Philip Rathgen(ClassicDriver)
Photos: Renaud Marion

Kevils R80 Amigo

This 1982/83 BMW R80 is an ex-Police bike and was commissioned by Robin from Bolivia South America for a full Kevils Speedshop cafe racer build. Kev & C’os reputation for building stunning BMW customs has clearly reached way beyond the shores of the UK and it’s not surprising considering the mix of consistency and value for money that Kev and his team provide at their Devon-based custom workshop.

Robin wanted a bike similar to “Jet!”, one of Kevil’s cafe racers from 2012, and Kev was happy to oblige but this time with a few improvements, including a hidden battery, and Kevil’s own alloy seat unit with with leather tuck and roll trim.

The bike also benefited from a stainless steel top yoke, a white faced clock (in KMH). Kevil’s stainless 2 into 1 system was also routed to the other side of the bike to allow the side mounted plate and tail light to be mounted to the left.

The bike is painted in Ford Pearl Panther Black with contrasting triple white racing stripes. Robin also wanted a headlight guard fitted to protect the lens as the roads are not great in Bolivia.

Newer style cam covers give away the bike’s 82/83 birthdate.

Side mounted plate leaves the rear end looking lean & mean.

Kev and Co were going to call the bike Chollo, which means Jet in Spanish (the most widely spoken language in Bolivia) but according to the urban dictionary this also means the squits/shits, so they wisely moved away from that moniker and instead settled on the more widely known and friendly Amigo.

See more of Kevil’s bikes on the Bike Shed here.