One of the most popular-and easier to find-models is a Honda CB. If you’re of the belief that it is better to build than to buy, there are a number of popular motorcycle models that you can turn some wrenches and transform into a cafe racer.
Most of these brands still continue to produce cafe racer variants of their motorcycle models, including manufacturers like Ducati, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha, and Husqvarna. Most of these featured the common cafe racer styling, without any increase to performance over their standard motorcycle counterparts. During the latter half of the ’70s, BMW, Honda, Moto Guzzi, and even Harley-Davidson built factory cafe racer models. As the motorcycle market expanded globally, Japanese motorcycles began their takeover of the factory cafe segment in the 1970s. It was common to see multiple bikes parked outside of cafes like the Busy Bee and Ace Cafe in London.ĭuring the 1960s, the cafe racer was almost exclusively a British-made motorcycle: Norton, Triumph, and BSA. Wallace Wyss, the famed American automotive writer and advertising consultant, stated that the term cafe racer should be attributed to a "motorcyclist who played at being an Isle of Man road racer" but was actually "someone who owned a racy machine but merely parked it near his table at the local outdoor cafe.” He was not entirely wrong because the Rockers of 1960 London used these modded motorcycles to race on England’s burgeoning highway system, to get from cafe to cafe as fast as they could. Pictured: One of the factory cafe racer models that Ducati has made, this being a 2001 MH900e.