The Japanese motorcycle most commonly associated with café racer conversions is the ubiquitous Honda CB750. But we haven’t seen anything like this one before. It’s raw and different, with a rough ‘n’ ready look that strangely works.
It was built by the Alabama shop Garage Company Customs—not to be confused with Yoshinobu Kosaka’s Garage Company in LA—and shop owner Larry has sent us a little background.
“We built two bikes for a father and a son, and this one is the son’s bike. We started with a ’75 CB750 from a local junkyard that was pretty rough: the owner of the yard said it had been with him for at least 15 years. We either redid or replaced everything on it. The customer wanted something rigid, but wanted the café look as well. I’ve never seen a rigid café bike, so we elected to use the stock tank along with clubman bars to give it the look he wanted. The stainless 4-into-2 exhaust was a collaborative effort between us and a good friend, Walker at Morgan Performance Fabrication. The motor was completely gone through with all OEM parts and stock specs, and we used a ribbed rear fender instead of a tail section because of the rigid back half.”
The result is long, low and mean-looking, the motorcycle equivalent of a rat rod auto. GCC styles itself as “Blue-collared, brash and blunt, building kick-ass bikes on a real man’s budget,” and by the looks of this CB750, they’re on the right track.