Want | Cafe Racer

During my trip to Hong Kong I stumbled upon a bike that caught my eye. It was a modified Cafe Racer that looked like a complete Norton Manx, however closer look revealed that it was in fact a pieced together bike containing parts from a number of different bikes; frame looked closer to an older Yamaha, and the engine was definitely from an older CB750. All in all, this bike was done up perfectly.

If your wondering what at Cafe Racer is: A café racer, originally pronounced "caff" (as in Kaff) racer, is a type of motorcycle as well as a type of motorcyclist. Both meanings have their roots in the 1960s British counterculture group the Rockers, or the Ton-up boys, although they were also common in Italy, Germany, and other European countries. In Italy, the term refers to the specific motorcycles that were and are used for short, sharp speed trips from one coffee bar to another.

Rockers were a young and rebellious Rock and Roll counterculture that wanted a fast, personalized and distinctive bike to travel between transport cafés along the newly built arterial motorways in and around British towns and cities. The goal of many was to be able to reach 100 miles per hour (called simply "the ton") along such a route where the rider would leave from a cafe, race to a predetermined point and back to the cafe before a single song could play on the jukebox, called record-racing. They are remembered as being especially fond of Rockabilly music and their image is now embedded in today's rockabilly culture.

-wiki