Category: Ducati cafe racer

If you’re a sneaker freak, you’ll know all about the Air Jordan XI Concord. Designed by Tinker Hatfield, it’s part of the legend that surrounds basketball player Michael Jordon—and it’s also the most popular model in the iconic Air Jordan range.

Michael Jordan is a keen motorcyclist, and even backed a race team a few years ago. So it feels appropriate that the XI Concord has become the catalyst for a very striking new custom from Impuls of Germany.

The idea came from the German sportswear label and retailer BSTN, and it’s a real light bulb moment.

“Duki from BSTN approached us to build a motorcycle for the release of the Jordan XI Concord,” says Impuls main man Philipp Wulk. “There would be a video shoot, and we would have just two months for the whole build.”

Philipp suggested the Ducati 916 as the donor bike. “It was groundbreaking in its own field, as Michael Jordan was in his. So we bought a 1995 model—the same year the XI Concord was first released.”

To meet the deadline, Impuls 3D scanned the Ducati and its famously beautiful fairing at Volke in Munich, who worked on the data for a week. With Philipp’s help, the specialist NeQu then designed and digitally built a fuel tank, a metal fuel cell, a revamped fairing and the front lights.

The files went to Creabis in Munich for printing—a day before Philipp got married. While he was on a brief honeymoon in Paris, his garage partner Matthias started fabricating the metal parts: the rear frame, a base plate for the seat, and the exhaust tip.

He also detabbed the frame, built new mounting points, and built the tank out of flat sheets of metal.

With one month to go, the detail work started. The electronics came from Motogadget, Magura supplied HC3 radial master cylinders with adjustable levers, and ABM Steelflex lines were hooked up.

The engine was treated to a custom airbox and then coated white—something you don’t often see—and Impuls have also built a custom exhaust system with ceramic-coated manifolds.

A Huawei Mate 20 smartphone with a curved OLED display doubles up as a navigation system and GPS speedo: a Motogadget Motoscope Pro instrument acts as a tachometer.

Impuls have deliberately gone for mismatched wheels and tires. At the front, there’s a black carbon Rotobox RBX2 wheel with a Pirelli Rosso Corsa II tire. The powder coated white wheel at the back is a PVM 10-spoked alloy shod with a Pirelli Diablo slick.

“We wanted to get the sole pattern of the shoe integrated into the tire profile,” says Philipp. “A great idea, but a real headache. In the end, it was the last part we finished.”

A few parts of the original fairing remain, since the mounting mechanism of the Ducati 916 is “nearly perfect”—and Impuls did not want to change the essentials of the air intakes and outlets.

The paint is mainly black and white, with just a few hints of ‘Concord blue’ to match the shoe. It was shot by Rico Ulbricht, who bore the brunt of the tight deadline but did an excellent job.

“As soon as a part was not needed for two days it went to Rico,” says Philipp. “Some parts had to be done twice, because they got scratched during the build—including the tank and part of the fairing.”

It was time for night shifts in the final week. The metal fuel tank was done, but the fuel filter and fuel pump weren’t yet integrated. “On the 916, the fuel pump sits right at the back of the fuel tank—where the original tank has its maximum height, and ours is flat. You could imagine how hard this part was.”

With the deadline looming, BSTN introduced Impuls to Kruno Nakic (above), a skilled craftsman who handles all of BSTN’s custom leather needs. “He rebuilt the seat pan with us, and sourced the materials,” says Philipp. The seat uses black neoprene, four kinds of outdoor material, and white leather, and was put together in just two days.

The tank was sealed, tested to three bars of pressure, and the fuel pump fitted. Then Impuls built a taillight out of a ten cubic centimeter block of acrylic glass, with help from Fabian Gatermann—the artist who worked on the ‘K101’ bike that shot Impuls to fame.

Just before the cameras started rolling for the publicity shoot, Matthias built a splitter for the lower part of the fairing—to give the bike an even more aggressive stance. And Niko at Lasergravur München engraved the tire rubber and the rims.

In a world of often tenuous ‘brand collaborations,’ this one hits the mark for us. It’s a radical look, it’s built using cutting-edge tech, and you just know it’ll be a blast to ride.

Michael Jordan, we’re sure, would approve.

Impuls | Facebook | Instagram | BSTN product page | Images by Philipp Wulk, Filip Gorski and Stephan Bauer

Image by Stephan Bauer

Most cultures have their own versions of Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available.” It’s especially applicable when building a bike, because without a brief, things tend to veer off course—or take years to complete.

Simone Conti knows this well. He became well acquainted with the Law while customizing this Ducati SuperSport, but the incredible result was worth the pain.

Simone’s not a professional builder in the strictest sense—though he hopes to be, one day. For now, he works in his family’s ceramic filter business in Sassuolo, near Modena in Italy, and wrenches in his spare time in his brother’s workshop.

He’s completed six builds so far under the banner of Simone Conti Motorcycles (or ‘SCM’), and four more currently on the bench. But he’s built this Ducati for himself.

The donor was a 2003 Ducati SuperSport 1000 DS, bought specifically for this project. The original idea was to create a classic café racer, but somewhere between Simone’s original sketches and his cardboard mockups, it morphed into the futuristic café-fighter you see here.

“Before I build,” says Simone, “I always make a small drawing with pencil and paper. But nine times out of ten, I change the idea.” You can almost see the Italian shrug.

All the Ducati’s bodywork is now custom—from the fairing and front fender to the tank and tail. Simone has fashioned the aggressive ‘cafe fighter’ curves from aluminum, using classic metal-shaping techniques with hammers and an English wheel.

There’s some trick detailing going on too. The headlight cutouts up front are reminiscent of current sport bikes, and are equipped with low-profile LED strips. There’s a similar treatment at the back, with a pair of taillight LEDs poking out through the grooves cut into the tail section.

Simone adapted a windshield from another Ducati to fit his fairing. The fuel tank’s been designed to sit over the original airbox, so there was no need to remove or modify it. It’s been kitted with the gas cap from a Ducati 1098.

The tail section is perched on a custom-built subframe—made with a trellis design that complements the SuperSport’s main frame. Up top is a bare-bones saddle, amplifying the bike’s racer appeal.

Moving to the suspension, Simone has plugged a set of Ducati 998 forks into custom triples. Since the SuperSport came stock with an Öhlins rear shock, he’s left that alone. But he did redesign the swing arm, to make space for wider rubber and give it a boxier vibe.

A wheel swap was on the cards, but Simone had trouble fitting the Alpina Carbon Pro Matrix rims he had set aside. So he kept the SuperSport’s OEM wheels—but upgraded the brakes with Brembo bits. It wasn’t a simple plug-n-play job either; the new swing arm design meant that a custom mount had to be fabbed up for the rear brake.

If you’re wondering what that belly-pan under the bike is for: it’s the exhaust, and one of our favorite features on this build. Simone fabricated a box silencer out of aluminum, then built an intricate two-into-one stainless steel header arrangement, flowing into it.

We’re betting it sounds fantastic, and it also hints at the under-the-hood work. This SuperSport’s been bumped up to 1,100 cc, and upgraded with a new controller and a slipper clutch. So it goes like stink.

There’s also a full complement of carbon engine covers, and an open clutch cover from EVR. You might also spot a carbon snorkel; it came off a race-spec Ducati SuperSport, and was altered to work here.

Simone’s sprinkled the SuperSport with some tasty off-the-shelf ‘go fast’ bits too. The grips, bar-end mirrors and fluid reservoirs are all from Rizoma.

Other than a splash of black on the subframe and swing arm, the red-framed Duc is devoid of paint and graphics. Which is just perfetto.

With Simone’s magnificent metalwork on full display, no-one will mistake this for a stock sportbike out on the autostrada.

Simone Conti Motorcycles Facebook | Instagram

Custom motorcycles are supposed to be one-offs: unique creations that make a statement about the owner or builder. Making a direct copy of someone else’s work is a no-no.

But over the years, we’ve heard tales of established builders being asked to replicate another custom bike. The answer is invariably no—and some builders won’t even replicate one of their own previous designs.

Jimmy Dressel from Germany’s Kaspeed found himself in this awkward situation. One of his clients had fallen in love with the Ducati racer built by Belgium’s Deep Creek Cycleworks.

The client already had a 750SS cafe racer built by Jimmy and his twin brother and father. Now he wanted a retro racer suitable for the track days at his local circuit—the Red Bull Ring in Austria.

So Jimmy emailed Kris at Deep Creek and sent him a rendering of what Kaspeed was proposing to build. “Kris was happy to hear about this,” says Jimmy. “He encouraged us to do the build, and was eager to see the result. “

“I find it really cool and a win-win situation to have such a nice feedback from a fellow builder. I suppose Belgians are just nice people altogether!”

A 2005-spec SuperSport 1000DS was soon on the bench in Kapeed’s workshop, tucked away in the small of Glauchau, Saxony. With the best part of 90 hp on tap, Showa adjustable USD forks and a six-speed ‘box, the Ducati would offer plenty of thrills on the track.

To err on the prudent side, Jimmy and the crew stripped the bike down. The SOHC twin was refreshed and given a clean coat of high-temp powder.

Then it was hooked up to a pair of stubby race-spec LeoVince LV-10 Black Edition mufflers. Custom, removable dB killers help keep the bike road legal.

The rear part of the SuperSport frame was tightened up—shortened, detabbed, and fitted with a simple loop. Then the complete trellis was sent away to a specialist for a fresh coat of gold powder.

Sitting atop the new frame is a hand built seat unit shaped from scratch—laid up with a mix of carbon fiber, Kevlar and fiberglass, and finished with an integrated taillight. An expert local upholsterer crafted the neat, factory-quality black leather seat.

Right ahead is the tank from carburetor-era 900SS, with a 900SS race fairing leading the way. A pair of tiny Shin-Yo ellipsoid headlights, just 38mm in diameter, are flushed into the fiberglass.

After coating most of the hard parts in a matt black powder, Kaspeed painted the Ducati in-house, giving it a design that echoes the white, fir green and-gold of Deep Creek’s 900ie-powered racer.

Kaspeed’s gold is a little more to the fore, and they’ve left off the race numbers that are on the fairing of the Belgian bike. It’ll certainly stand out on track days, with a hard-edged 90s endurance racer vibe.

Jimmy and his family of helpers spent about 200 man-hours on the Ducati, and it shows. “I think details matter a lot to the overall ‘feel’ for the customer,” he says. “Even if he doesn’t notice it as much as we do.”

We’re sure Kaspeed’s client will appreciate the quality of this build—and the tactful way Jimmy handled the relationship with Deep Creek. But after all that work, we just hope he doesn’t bin it on the first corner at the track …

Kaspeed Custom Motorcycles | Facebook | Instagram | Images by Jimmy Dressel