It's easy to get pigeonholed in an industry where a distinct visual style is the only real way to set yourself apart from the crowd. You build a few bikes with a cohesive look and a few common aesthetic cues, and pretty soon people think they know what to expect out of you next. Donny Loos and Jeff Cochran, partners in Cincinnati, OH-based SuckerPunch Sallys (SPS), have built their successful brand on classy back-to-basics bobbers that are long on old-school cool and decidedly short on high-end billet bits and pieces. That's what makes the shined-up beauty seen here (dubbed "Donny's Dragbike") a little surprising at first.
"Everybody who has seen it loves the bike, but it's just not a typical SuckerPunch bike," Donny explained. "If anyone hasn't liked it, they haven't said so to my face."
No flat black, no brushed aluminum-just a tight list of top-shelf aftermarket parts mated to a brighter-than-usual collection of SuckerPunch's proprietary pieces in a forbidden affair that started with only a pair of Arlen Ness's speed-hole-riddled Battastini billet wheels.
"I really liked the wheels when I saw them," Donny said. "I really had no idea when I bought them what I was going to do with them. I bought them mainly because I wanted to get a set before they got discontinued or something, and I couldn't get them anymore."
While the wheels gathered dust for the better part of a year, Donny began drawing up plans for a bike decidedly outside of the old-school bobber mold, but with enough touches to assure people it was still a SuckerPunch Sallys motorcycle.
He started with a modified proprietary SuckerPunch rigid frame with 3 inches of stretch in the backbone and 40 degrees of rake. A set of Harley-Davidson Deuce fork tubes bolted into Accutronix triple-trees kept things bouncing along nicely up front.