Hazan Motorworks

Born New York 1981 and currently based in Los Angeles, Max Hazan has been riding and building things since he can remember. But it wasn’t until he decided to build a motorcycle from scratch that everything clicked. “It used every skill that I had, appealed to every one of my senses, and when you were done, you had a bike to ride.” But things didn’t take off right away: he was literally one day away from going back to work when the phone rang and he started to sell a few bikes.

He started building motorcycles full time in 2012 in a small space around the corner from his apartment in Brooklyn. “I never intended to do it for a living,” he says. “I was literally looking to pass time following a bad enduro crash that left me unable to walk for about six months, and motorcycles were the first thing that came to mind.”

Once recovered, Max went back to work in NYC but continued to build bikes. It wasn’t until his dad pulled him aside and told him to ‘go for it’ (with a little financial aid) that he did it for a living.

“I think the main reason that my bikes are different is that I don’t look at other bikes for ideas—I start completely from scratch. I find a unique engine or part to inspire a general design, and let the bike design itself,” he says. “You end up with a unique style almost by default.”

Initially, Max found that the only way to make money while building bikes was to do everything himself, minus the paint: engine building, machining, wheel building and tuning. “It forced me to be a fast learner, but pays off now,” he says. “The trendy social media side of the business never appealed to me: I genuinely love motorcycles as mechanical objects, be it Harley, Ducati or Japanese. They all appeal to me on some level, so I try to think of the wildest thing that I can make with each one in the simplest way possible.”