Aftermarket Moto Design 283 February 2023 AMD 283 Feb 2023 | Page 26

show has been the custom bike show , of course , and the much-anticipated Sunday afternoon awards . There were 14 classes this year , plus a ' Best of Show ' award . With the AMD World Championship now having announced its cancelation after a fouryear break , many potential AMD World Championship competitors showed up at Custombike ( as some had a month earlier at the Bigtwin Show in the Netherlands ) to compete and show their handcrafted masterpieces : Ukraine , the Netherlands , Sweden , Belgium , Austria , Switzerland , Poland ,

The bike show at Custombike always means a massive interest of German and European custom bike specialists as well as garage-built modified motorcycles . 260 custom bikes in 14 categories were squeezed into the existing show space - many more had to be turned away .
Czech Republic , Denmark and many more countries were among the exhibitors of the 260 strong bike show - more than 100 had to be rejected when the planned available exhibition space was running out long before the entry deadline . The winners line-up showed some incredible engineering and design skills , highlighted by ' Best of Show ' winner Mark van der Kwaak ' s " Cadbike 49 ", Aad Hemskerk ' s superclean Triumph T 120 and Czech Republic based Marek Foltis who , at
" Best of Show winner Mark van der Kwaak ' s Cadbike 49 " to fill the void left by the bankruptcy of the former promoter ( publisher Huber Verlag ) with one shared aim - to promote custom bike building . Both teams have agreed to continue the name of Custombike , but in ownership terms are a complete reboot , a new ownership formula arising from the ashes of the mid-2020 Huber Verlag bankruptcy . The " Custombike Show " brand name was acquired by Messe Bad Salzuflen ' s
Andreas Reibchen . Andreas has a strong personal interest
" Biker Build-Off action by H-D Bielefeld and Bike Farm Melle "
in seeing the show continue , having been the ' main mover ' 25 years ago in persuading the founder of the show
( Egbert Eschenbacher of ' High Performance ' magazine fame ) to move the event from Mannheim up to Bad Salzuflen . Andreas also just happens to be the owner of several authorized Harley dealerships in nearby Bielefeld , Düsseldorf and Osnabrück and is soon to open a new Cologne / Bonn dealership in Wesseling . The other survivors of the Huber crash
" Volksracer " won the ' Best Radical ' class , a VW-powered Bonneville racer . Kilian Wahl implanted a 1641 air-cooled Beetle motor , charged it with an Eaton M45 charger and fed it with a Weber 45 double carb . Rolling chassis components are modified from various motorcycle brands for just one reason - land speed records . the age of 31 , constructed his own 500 cc ten-cylinder radial engine which integrated five separate compressors feeding the motor . There were many more superb , handcrafted masterpieces that didn ' t make it to the stage as only the first placed trophies were handed out . As much as this year ' s Custombike Show looked and felt like the traditional Bad Salzuflen showcase , this was an all-new , completely different event , continued by two organizational teams who stepped-up
26 AFTERMARKET MOTO DESIGN - FEBRUARY 2023