American Motorcycle Dealer AMD 232 November 2018 | Page 23
Wannabe Choppers: Enrico de Haas is one of the leaders of a new
generation of younger, inventive, forward thinking custom bike builders
in Europe whose innovative parts designs are already to be found in
many of the leading distributor catalogs. Most recently ‘Ricky’ garnered
admiration and opprobrium in equal measure for the Shovelhead
Sportster styled E-bike he built at the Bad Salzuflen show at the end of
last year. Short-sighted, so-called purists took exception to the way he
went about the build and see embracing contemporary technology as
potentially killing the custom market. Whereas, in fact, armed with a
thousand thinkers like ‘Ricky’, we’d have the whole world riding custom
bikes and fuelling our balance sheets in a future, like all futures, that by
definition cannot be the same as the past; www.wannabe-choppers.com
MMB-Messtechnik: One of Europe’s oldest instrument makers (once
standard equipment on models from Simson and MZ among others) and
nowadays owned by Pulsotronic, MMB’s contemporary range of German
made, innovative electronic gauges for mopeds, motorbikes, trikes and
quads are based on more than 50 years of experience;
www.mmb-messtechnik.de
Kawasaki: Another of the OEMs to have a second booth, in INTERMOT
Customized in Hall 10, the focus for “Big Green” was its ‘Twin Project’
collaboration with Berlin based women’s motorcycle club ‘The
Curves’. Celebrating the diversity of the brand’s reach and the
diversity of the results that customizers can achieve with Kawasaki
platforms, the project was designed to find the common DNA in a
Z650 and a W650, two very different bikes - “Sisters From Another
Mother" - with the finished bikes showcasing the often conflicting
dynamics of form and function when customizing factory platforms.
‘Twin Project’ supporters include German custom parts specialist LSL,
Berlin based instruments and accessory developer Moto Gadget,
German suspension specialist Wilbers, leading Italian exhaust
manufacturer SC Project and German retailer Detlev Louis;
www.kawasaki.com; www.thecurves.de