The Yamaha Virago is a great platform for building a café racer. It’s massive V-twin and great proportions makes it a love for the eye when stripped down to it’s bare essentials. I had to share this great peace of work By Diogo Oliveira. I couldn’t find any specs of it, so […]

V-Twin Back in 1981 Yamaha introduced their XV-range motorcycles, which were all based around an air-cooled V-twin engine. Their most notable model was the Virago cruiser; however, a bit more anonymous was the TR1. Sold in various displacement forms, ranging from 535cc to 1100cc, the XV-models were primarily aimed at buyers […]

From mild-mannered cruiser to hard-edged café racer, change is a beautiful thing. Check out this Top 10 Yamaha Virago Cafe Racers and see if you agree. The Yamaha Virago was a significant milestone in the Japanese Cruiser family tree, but before we get there, here’s a quick cruiser history lesson. Not surprisingly […]

Under the label “if it ain’t Dutch, it ain’t much”, Yamaha Motor The Netherlands and watch brand TW Steel, work together to create a line of unique custom motorcycles that are linked to each other. One year ago this unique collaboration started with this cool custom XV950R, built by the guys […]

German brewer Schlachtwerk made a great version of this Yamaha TR1, also know as the XV1000 (Europe) and the slightly modified XV920 (US). They built this brutal bike last year. Not all specifications are published, because it’s been built for (drag)racing. One of their main goals was to reduce the weight of […]

Classified Moto, a Richmond (US) based brewer made an awesome looking custom (the type is not really specified as café racer, bratstyle or scrambler, just “classified”) based on a ’82 Yamaha XV920 Virago, they’ve called the “Shreveport Slammer”. Some mods: 2010 Yamaha R6 front end Benelli Mojave gas tank Custom stainless […]

Beautiful ’82 Yamaha XV920 Virago Cafe Racer built by Greg Hageman. More details about the bike here. Like this one? You should take a look at this Virago Cafe Racer.  

  Back in 2020, BikeBrewers were invited to join the first edition of the Café Racer Fest in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. Unfortunately COVID had paralyzed the world and travel restrictions caused us to miss out on that event. We followed the happening on social media while the enthusiasm of participants, visitors and […]

You may recall a similar looking bike built by Industrial Moto late last summer. We featured it in 2017. Someone liked it so much they wanted one for themselves and commissioned Industrial Moto to build another one. While this version is based on the original Project Scout concept, it incorporated a […]

I can’t help it, but we got a submission of another awesome Yamaha Virago. And just like Bal Deo’s Virago I’ve posted last week, it’s an XV750. It’s not on purpose, it’s just how they roll in. This bike is built by Oran, owner of Buriam Siammotor, a motorcycle dealer in Buriram. This mid-sized […]

Yes! You’re right! Better late than never! This is the list of the 21 best custom motorcycles of 2017! Last year we did a voting based on the stats of popular bikes that year but this time we kept things much simpler. So no hard data, voting system, social statistics, or fancy […]

  Buying Cafe Racer Parts The Café Racer look is forever associated with 1960’s London. The magical engine size was 650cc and long tanks, short seats, clip-ons and loud exhausts were the order of the day. Café Racers (or better “rockers”) wore black studded jackets with drainpipe dark blue jeans and […]

A lot of beautiful custom motorcycles around the web this month: we’ve selected the most outstanding bikes for you. This month we have another amazing bike from (Ducati) legend XTR Pepo, a radical BMW R nineT from Australia, a BMW S1000R from Switzerland a Honda NX650 from South Africa and last […]

Donny Ariyanto from Studio Motor is a well known custom motorcycle builder in Indonesia and he’s getting more and more exposure in the rest of the world. But if you become more noticed, you’ll have to come up with more cool custom bikes. So Donny is spending a lot of hours in […]

Yes, we also like LISTS! Especially when it comes to café racer bikes. So here’s a list of the 17 best café racer bikes you can grab for building a café racer. Please note: this is a list of vintage motorcycles, because we like the old timers best: All Honda CB-series from […]

A café racer project all starts with one simple question: which bike should I use as a donor / base motor? In this post we list some of the most popular models which are very suitable to turn into a café racer and are affordable for the most of us. Classic icons […]