MOD DISORDER

Our memory lane is lined with bent and hacked metal that turned fervent ideas into beautiful realities... well, mostly. Here are some of those stories

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THUNDERCLAP

It is no surprise that Motoring's first modded machine was a café racer. After all, nothing showcases everyday grit and purpose more than this species of caffeinated two-wheeler. In 2003, only Pablo was around when our founding editor, Bijoy Kumar Y, rolled an innocent Royal Enfield Thunderbird into a workshop to be fashioned into what you see here. For at least two of us back then, it became a template of what was possible in life. The Thunderclap was equal parts beautiful and awkward, like life itself, with the former more than making up for the latter. Oh, how freeing it would've been to ride a motorcycle like that in a time that was actually closer to the original café racers than the handful of factory-made slicksters we've gotten since then.

In a time when Orange County Choppers and Biker Build-Off were the hottest shows in town (both overwhelmingly stupid in a typically American manner), building a café racer took some original thinking that was tethered to reality. Yes, there were no exotic parts on the Thunderclap off the Hitchcocks catalogue. Yes, it was built on a budget that was probably smaller than today's average Starbucks bill. But it gave our readers something to stare at for hours, days and months on end, something that'd stay in their minds for years to come. And that something was hope. Mating a café racer 'bar to the standard mid-mounted 'pegs? Erm, not much hope in that, we'll admit.

SB1100