Car guys have it right. They understand swoop, they understand flow, and they understand lines. They also have a lot of tin to work with, as well as nice big canvases to make their own styling statements. Bikes don't generally afford the builder the luxury of working in terms of square footage; rather, it is all-and we do mean all-in the details, in the realm of the micro-inch, for better or (as is the case most of the time) for worse. Car guys in general (easy there, you exceptions) don't get bikes.
The little details can make a bike a big winner visually as well as functionally. If they aren't carefully attended to and addressed, they can make a bike appear as if it were a jumbled carcass of random parts from the builder's favorite parts catalog. Anyone who has bought a part he thought would look great for his bike, only to discover it didn't look quite as good as the mind's eye envisioned it, would know this. Tying it all together should be a primary concern to the moto-stylist, and the man who built this machine has nailed the details dead to rights with this low-slung ride. This bike does not feature hanging clutch cables, misaligned fenders, and plasti-chrome sticky tape covers; this bike is done right: clean and tight.
Enter the king of clean: Tom Kegler of Class Act Customs, located in scenic, and serene Mesa, AZ. Tom is actually a car guy, and this was his very first ground-up motorcycle build. Just a glance at this bike makes us only guess the caliber of cars that must come out of his and his partner, Scott Irvine's, temple of a shop. Tom had the itch to apply some of his 20-plus years of automotive painting and metal fabrication to motorcycles (due in large part to their current popularity), and what better bikes to work with than V-Twins? Tom saw the aftermarket as chock-full of accessible, well-made, and designed parts-or, as he would say, "items to start with," because, as you can see, nearly every part of this bike has been massaged, tweaked, and fit to appear as a seamless, clean, and simple piece of two-wheeled functional "get on and go" art.
One must step back and appreciate the man himself for a moment before we dig into the juicy bits this bike serves up. Tom seems like a pretty low-key fellow at first, reluctant to toot his own horn. Refreshingly, Tom does not call himself a biker; no, his interests are strictly in building these types of well-made bikes. His only intention is to provide these fun machines for the use of others.
Tom had a distinct philosophy when it came to selecting parts for this project. He asked, "Why would I work from scratch when the parts available in the aftermarket are technologically advanced in design, made from superior materials, and readily available?" Not only does this philosophy allow a bike to be made more quickly due to the fact that you've got starting points to work from, but, as is the case in most instances, the manufacturers have done the R&D and know that the part is up to the rigors of motorcycle use. The parts for this build took five months to collect-not bad when you consider how hard it is to find the fit and finish you want off a printed page. Achieving this sort of goal is hard enough for the seasoned builder, but a first-time builder, new to bikes? All we can say is "wow."