![]() ![]() The café racer subculture has created a separate look and identity with modern café racers taking style elements from American greasers, British rockers, 70s bikers, and modern motorcycle riders to create a global style of their own. Café racers are remembered as being especially fond of rockabilly music and their image is now embedded in today's rockabilly culture. However, author Mike Seate contends that record-racing is a myth, the story having originated in an episode of the BBC Dixon of Dock Green television show. Biker lore has it that one goal was to reach " the ton", (100 miles per hour (160 km/h)), along a route where the rider would leave from a café, race to a predetermined point, and return to the café before a single song could play on the jukebox, called record-racing. ![]() Owning a fast, personalised, and distinctive café racer gave them status and allowed them to ride between transport cafés in and around British towns and cities. "Rockers" were a young and rebellious rock and roll subculture who wanted to escape the crushing convention of dreary 1950s UK culture. Subculture ġ960s Rockers outside Watford's Busy Bee Café ![]() Writing in 1973, Wallace Wyss claimed that the term "café racer" was originally used in Europe to describe a "motorcyclist who played at being an Isle of Man road racer". In 2014, journalist Ben Stewart recognised the café racer as a European style that would be appreciated in America. The café racer idea caught on in the US, which was already a major market for British motorcycles. Young men were eager to buy such cast-off motorcycles and modify them into café racers, which for them represented speed, status, and rebellion, rather than mere inability to afford a car. Previously, motorcyles (often with voluminous sidecars) provided family transport, but the growing economy enabled such families to afford a car and dispense with a motorcycle at last. In post-war Britain, car ownership was still uncommon, but as rationing and austerity diminished, by the late 1950s young men could for the first time afford a motorcycle. Café racer origins Ĭafé racers were particularly associated with the urban Rocker or "Ton-Up Boys" youth subculture, where the bikes were used for short, quick rides between popular cafés, such as London's Ace Café on the North Circular ring road, and Watford's Busy Bee café. ![]() Items considered "non-essential" such as side panels, rear chain enclosures, and voluminous mudguards (fenders) were replaced by lighter items, or dispensed with altogether. Noted for its visual minimalism, a 1960s café racer would typically be an English parallel twin motorcycle with low-mounted clip-on or "Ace" handlebars with rear-set footrests. Café racers have since become popular around the world, and some manufacturers produce factory-made models that are available in the showrooms. Café racers were standard production bikes that were modified by their owners and optimized for speed and handling for quick rides over short distances. And while they might look aggressive, even mean, café bikes are simple mounts that even riders with basic experience can handle.Triton café racer with a Triumph engine in a Norton Featherbed frameĪ café racer is a genre of sport motorcycles that originated among British motorcycle enthusiasts of the early 1960s in London. The result is nimbler handling and a more engaging feel. While a few large companies, including BMW and Moto Guzzi, sell café-esque models today, the most inspired examples are emerging from the workshops of custom builders.Ĭustom café racers may not go any faster than the hottest factory-built models, but they tend to be considerably lighter, partly because they use aluminum, carbon fiber and other light (and pricey) materials while skipping much of the heavy electronic gear needed to operate the latest fuel-injection and engine-management systems. These light, stripped-down bikes are built in the spirit of 1960s models, which owners modified for extra speed and raced from one “café” (bar) to the next. Those people are turning instead to two-wheeled couture: café racers. FOR SOME riders, the latest racy sport motorcycles and muscular cruisers are just too off-the-shelf to excite. ![]()
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