During the golden age of motorcycling, the Brits made a stand with a breed of motorcycle that would become an icon of speed and beauty: the Cafe Racer. Young men with a desire for speed, and the willingness to exploit every possible drop of power, started stripping and tuning their English road bikes, racing at very high speeds from coffee shop to coffee shop across the English countryside. They were fueled by pop music and leaded petrol, spawning a culture that would pass the test of time and influence the future of motorcycle design.

The racer lives on.

Today, the cafe racer maintains a deep-rooted, passionate following, encompassing, in style and attitude, the soul of those early British Marquees and the leather-clad hooligans who earned the name “Rocker.” (A term rooted in Britain’s 1960s’ counter-culturists, the Rockers.)

One for all and all for one!

Who doesn’t know this motto from Alexandre Dumas’ famous The Three Musketeers? Each of them is cut from the same cloth: unorthodox and quarrelsome, but nevertheless unique – with the shared goal of fighting crime.

What? A literary history lesson in a fighter mag? No way!

But the three “musketeers” in this article bear more than a passing resemblance to Dumas’ trio. They ride design-linked bikes, ride together most often, think together as they work – partners, in this case, with the shared goal of fightering – on their “Hyperfants.”

I found the Hyperfants close to my home in the Netherlands. They were created by an old acquaintance, who lives just a couple of miles away. So it’s true what they say: you don’t have to look far to find something beautiful; you only have to look past the tip of your nose.

Jay Abington had never heard of a fighter before he built this bike and subsequently found Customfighters. com. We’re very glad he did, as he’s shown us something very different. Jay is a down-to-earth, unpretentious guy. In speaking with him, it became clear that this build was done for his own pure enjoyment, and nothing else.   He wasn’t out to impress anyone or prove anything, he simply wanted to build something he could be proud of — something he had made with his own two hands. Building and creating is Jay’s life. To say that he is a gearhead would be an understatement. Putting things together is something he says has been part of him since he was a kid, and he expects it always will be. Jay just cannot stop; he has to constantly be working on something — to the extent that he literally built the wooden bed he sleeps on, AND the hand tools to carve it with! “Idle hands do evil things, so we’ve got no time for that,” he said.

When he was 10, Jay began to work on tractors and equipment, learning from his father-figure neighbor. By the time he was in high school, he was working for an auto parts store, building engines and doing machine work.  Back when working auto parts meant really knowing the stuff, not just reading the parts fiche. His love for tuning led him to work at a high-performance BMW motorcycle shop in the Bay area of California, making parts and building winning race bikes.  The eight years spent there, he says, taught him more than he’d ever learned in terms of performance tuning.  Years later, he moved on to hot rod engines and sprint cars.  He’s spent time alongside people like New Zealand’s John Britten, but he has no “holier-than-thou” aura about him. More recently, Jay has done heavy equipment repair (ask him about his customized work-truck), which he is stepping away from a bit while working for a local business owner — building race cars in one of the nicest home facilities I’ve ever seen, including a personal dyno! Suffice to say, just about everything Jay does revolves around motors and/or having fun.

Read More »