A Skinny Chopper for a Fat Jubilee ! Thunderbike ’ s 35th Anniversary Build
The Thunderbike story started in
1985 in a shed … kind of sounds familiar ! But this was not a shed in Milwaukee , it was in Hamminkeln in Germany , and 35 years later , the result hasn ' t quite been a business on the scale of Harley-Davidson itself , but it has resulted in one of the largest Harley-Davidson dealerships in Europe ( if not the largest by annual new model sales volume ) and one of Europe ' s premier parts and accessory manufacturing and custom bike design and building operations . It is still relatively unusual for an authorized Harley dealer to have such a scale of custom and aftermarket action going , but then again , founder
and former racer Andreas Bergerforth is not exactly your usual kind of Harley dealer , parts manufacturer or custom bike builder . No sir ! Not on any level is there anything ' usual ' about Andreas Bergerforth , and certainly nothing ' usual ' about the business he ' s built ! From the shed , Andreas quickly progressed to a Suzuki franchise in 1987 . At the time when the socalled ' Metric Cruiser ' bubble had the force behind it in the 1990s and ' Fat Rear Ends ' were the default custom conversion du jour , especially in Germany , Thunderbike became the premier ' go-to ' ' metric ' custom shop , certainly in Germany , if not in the whole of Europe . Then , all of a sudden , in 2006 Andreas completely reinvented himself and his business as an authorized Harley-Davidson dealer . Even more remarkably , he
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