Custom Chopper Photos

A chopper is a fundamentally customized motorcycle that is extremely stylized or which treats aspects such as frame geometry or engine design in an uncommon way compared to standard manufacturing. Custom motorcycles are unique or individually produced in a very limited quantity, as opposed to "stock" bikes or "stockers," which are mass produced.

A streetfighter is a superbike that is customized by removing the fairing, and making other changes that result in an overall more aggressive look. Made popular by European riders, this type of custom motorcycle is gaining popularity all over the world. This particular term should not be confused with a street motorcycle or street-use motorcycle, which is a generic term used to urban street bikes.

Talking about its background and history, though it has its styling origins in the Café racer culture of the 1950s and 1960s, the streetfighter is very much inspired by the new Japanese bikes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The term "streetfighter" appears to have been originally coined by Steven Myatt, to describe what the guys like Huggy, Irish Stewart and Huffy were building in the late 1980s. He applied the term to motorcycles which were modified to enhance their practicality, performance and handling, as opposed to the custom scene which preferred style over outright ability. Though it's unclear when and who built the first of the modern streetfighters, the first sighting of the design template was seen in Bike magazine in 1983 when the editor commissioned Andy Sparrow to draw a comic strip to replace Ogri. It was entitled 'Bloodrunners' and featured despatch riders, delivering blood and live human organs for transplant operations. They rode enormous japanese inline fours with turbos, with no extraneous parts. Fairings, mirrors, pillion seats & rear footpegs etc were all binned in favour of lightness and handling ability. Under-seat exhausts, dual headlights and the widest tyres were de-rigeur. Huggy Leaver was inspired to start customizing bikes in this style and there was a proliferation of 'ratted' streetfighters in London in the late eighties.

Besides, the term has since been diluted somewhat, and is now often applied to any bike with motocross style handlebars, no fairings or other typical customizations. In recent years, the term has also come to be applied to motorcycles manufactured without fairings in this style, usually based on the same engine/frame combination as an equivalent fully-faired motorcycle in the manufacturer's product line-up.

Nowadays, race replicas, like the Suzuki GSX-R Series and the Honda CBR series, that have been damaged in accidents or through hooliganism are generally the starting basis for a streetfighter. The GSX-R 750 was initially often favored, due to its light weight and flexible engine. A side effect of the use of the 1980s GSX-R was the retention of the dual headlights in the subsequent streetfighter. This feature is now a common trait in both custom bikes and factory streetfighters like the Triumph Speed Triple.

Remarkably, in 1993 Ducati introduced a new naked sportbike called the Monster. Since that time it has been a perennial favorite amongst streetfighter enthusiasts. In 1994 however, Triumph Motorcycles introduced the Speed Triple, based on its Daytona sportbike. This was an immediate success and rapidly eclipsed the Monster in sales. The Triumph is now the current favorite among factory streetfighters due to excellent performance, low ownership cost, and high reliability.

To conclude, in the intervening years both bikes have been considerably improved, and have been joined by a rapidly growing group of other manufactures producing naked sportbikes. Here they are: Benelli, Aprilia, Bimota, BMW, Moto Guzzi, Moto Morini, MV Agusta, and Buell, a subsidiary of Harley Davidson. Even the "big four" Japanese motorcycle manufactures, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha, have tried to enter this market, but with limited success to date.