Inspiration Friday: 2023 AMD World Bike Building Championships • Total Motorcycle

Aug 14, 2023

Not much is more inspiring than a Custom Bike Building Championship or holding the winning $1.08 billion Powerball lottery ticket. While I don’t have the winning Powerball ticket to share, I can offer up not 1 but 2 Custom Bike Building Championships for you! Both 37th Biker Fest International Italian Motorcycle Championship final (over 120,000 attendees) and Westside Museum in Southern California with MNNTHBX and Steady Garage Honda Navi custom’s are this week’s Inspiration Friday week #253.

With over 18 custom bikes to drool over in big full sized HD images, we have you covered this week so you don’t have to go to the new Barbie Movie. Best Rookie, Best in Show, Freestyle, Bagger, Metric, Modified H-D, Streetfighter, Old Style, Cafè Racer and Scrambler…we have them all!

Welcome Inspiration Friday: 2023 AMD World Bike Building Championships. Enjoy and if you did win the Powerball Lottery…would you consider donating to the world biggest (and 100% free) motorcycle website to help reach even more riders around the world? 🙂

Total Motorcycle would like to thank Honda and Biker Fest International Italy well as our over 400 million of motorcycle riders and enthusiasts who visit and support TMW for inspiring us to bring you this week’s Inspiration Friday: 2023 AMD World Bike Building Championships!

Each week we bring you another Inspiring Motorcycle story to inspire you to get out and ride.

Join Total Motorcycle here and help us by joining Total Motorcycle’s new YouTube Membership and $2/mo Patreon channels.

Please help us help riders, support motorcyclists and motorcycling worldwide today.

On a side note, For those curious and know about computers, the “AMD” in AMD World Bike Building Championship, from what I can tell, has nothing to do with the CPU manufacturer AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).

Big names of the Kustom Kulture and talented rookies ‘got in the ring’ of the 37th Biker Fest International for the final of the Italian Motorcycle Championship, battling it out with airbrushes, paintworks and inventive technical solutions. The Italian event also returned to be the stage for the only Italian date of the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building

The 2023 edition of the Italian Motorcycle Championship has been archived in Lignano Sabbiadoro (Udine-Italy). The final of the IMC, the only Italian championship dedicated to custom bikes and builders, was staged during the 37th Biker Fest International, the most important and longest-running custom bike show in Europe, an unmissable event for all enthusiasts that this year recorded the 120,000 attendees in its four days.

This top-level event, born in 1987 by the will of Moreno Persello, also had the pleasure to host again the only Italian round of the AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building, organized by the British magazine American Motorcycle Dealer: a partnership that has been going on for several years and that turns the BFI into the ‘arena’ of a prestigious international competition. Longtime Biker and then founder of Editrice Custom, Persello directs – together with his son Micke and his wife Carla Battigelli – a ‘poker’ of magazines, which makes this specialized publishing house an absolute reference in the field of Kustom Kulture: Bikers Life, the first historical magazine dedicated to the Biker world, was joined over the years by Cruisin’ Life, Kustom World and Special Cafè.

It’s exactly in this context that many big names of the custom motorcycle scene ‘got in the ring’, challenging each other with airbrushes, paintworks and inventive technical solutions. On the Main Stage of the Luna Park Area, one of the five sectors of the event, BFI’s Organizers Moreno and Micke Persello presented prizes and awards worth more than 10,000 euros. The international jury, composed also by journalists and AMD World Championship judges Onno “Berserk” Wieringa (NL) and Horst Rösler (D), selected the best creations by Italian and foreign participants divided over eight categories, also awarding the AMD trophies, Best Rookie Customizer, special prizes from the sponsor LK Arredamenti and, of course, the sought-after Best in Show.

This highly coveted prize went to Mannaia Motorcycles’ ‘Miss Penny‘, a custom bike built around a beefy S&S V-Twin that features an ingenious hubless front end. Among the Baggers, the first place went to the Yamaha Wild Star from Biker Sheriff, while the H-D Shovelhead from Austria’s Penz Custombikes took the prize in the Freestyle category. Still in the Harley-Davidson sector, the Modified class saw the success of the mighty V-Rod from Custom THOM, while first place among Old Style bikes went to the BSA 500 Sloper from PDF Motociclette. GDesign’s Husqvarna 430 SM took the lead in the Scrambler, whereas the Moto Guzzi Nevada from Motor Line came turned out to be the best Café Racer. In the Metric category, dedicated to custom bikes built on the basis of not-American manufactured models, the victory went to the colorful BMW R18 “Joker” by Aurelia Motorrad, but a flat-twin of the German brand also dominated the Streetfighter class, thanks to the R1200 S built by FTG Moto.

The BMW R100 RS by VM Cycles, for its part, was awarded in the AMD World Championship along the H-D Evolution by Niko Bikes and the Harley Panshovel by DMC Toys 4 Men. A special mention, finally, for Roscoo Motorcycle, which recorded the victory among Rookies with a promising Moto Guzzi special and won a dedicated stand at the Verona’s Motor Bike Expo. A clear example of the talent-scouting nature of the Custom Bike Show, which is not only ‘heavy’ names of the industry but also discovery of the champions of tomorrow. To them, as well as to all the participants who put themselves on the line, the congratulations of the Organizers and the applause of the large audience under the stage.

Having archived the 37th Biker Fest International, the date to mark on the calendar is September the 14th-17th, when engines will turn back on in Lignano Sabbiadoro (Udine-Italy) for the second edition of the Italian Bike Week. The best way to close a memorable season on a high note!

ITALIAN MOTORCYCLE CHAMPIONSHIP AND AMD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP RANKING

Scrambler

Cafè Racer

Old Style

Streetfighter

Modified H-D

Metric

Bagger

Freestyle

Best in Show

Best Rookie Customizer

AMD

Special prizes by LK Arredamenti

A pair of aftermarket partners showed off custom Navi builds during the model’s media ride event at Westside Museum in Southern California. After being given early access to the Navi, noted miniMOTO cultural trendsetters MNNTHBX and Steady Garage each put in long hours in order to complete their projects in time to display during this weekend’s IMS Outdoors motorcycle show at OC Fair & Event Center.

Since its Tuesday announcement, the Navi has earned headlines as a great choice for new riders, thanks to its affordability ($1,807 MSRP!), approachability (automatic transmission) and fun styling. That said, customization is always a priority for many miniMOTO customers, and the MNNTHBX and Steady Garage projects show what is possible with a vivid imagination and skillful execution.

MNNTHBXIt’s hard to find anyone with their fingers more squarely on the pulse of the miniMOTO community than MNNTHBX co-owners Kevin Estep and Greg Hatcher, who are also the organizers of Barber Small Bore, an annual miniMOTO mecca at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Upon receiving the Navi at their Seymour, Tennessee, workshop, Estep and Hatcher immediately pegged it as being perfectly suited for a racetrack pit bike, so they went with a sporty design. “We were really inspired by the bike’s utility, and how we could take that and make it cool,” Estep said. “We’ve done a lot with bikes that are carbureted and have CVT transmissions, so that was in our wheelhouse. It’s sort of a blend of a Grom and a Ruckus, both of which we have a lot of experience with.”

The bodywork was covered in racy red, white and blue graphics, an Öhlins shock was fitted via a billet-aluminum mount, and a Renthal low-positioned MX-style handlebar was clamped in place, as was a Yoshimura carbon-fiber exhaust. The Navi comes with 12- and 10-inch front and rear wheels, so to give it a road-race-style balanced effect, MNNTHBX sourced the largest rear tire they could fit. While that and the colors make for a sport bike look, the project’s highlight is arguably its full sound system, including two 6.5 inch Kicker speakers between the rider’s legs, along with an amp and a controller integrated into the panel in front of the bike’s seat. “The Navi already comes with a storage compartment, so we thought about how we could repurpose that,” Estep explained. “We figured if you’re in the paddock, you always want some tunes, so we built a billet enclosure to go in that same space and integrated a Kicker sound system. It sounds really good!”

STEADY GARAGELocated just 40 minutes north of the IMS Outdoors show in Irwindale, California, Steady Garage has birthed four previous special Honda projects, but the Navi was something different for partners Kevin Dunn, Jimmy Chen, Bhwe Suh and Duy Nguyen. “It was a brand-new bike for us, so we had to do a lot of research and trial and error,” Dunn said. “A lot of the inspiration was from the Ruckus and the Grom, so we modified some of our existing parts for those models in order to work with the Navi. The style we went with is similar to what we call ‘street Grom’ – low stance and a wide front wheel.”

Out back, Steady Garage barely managed to fit a rear wheel that’s both wider and has a larger diameter, a choice that necessitated sourcing a low-profile tire. Vance & Hines contributed a unique custom exhaust with stainless-steel flex pipe and twin outlet tips. The shock is a high-end unit custom-built by Taiwanese company Gears Racing, and the bike’s overall styling is super-clean. “We gave it what we call a diamond tail, which is also common with the Ruckus, and that really cleaned up the rear end,” Dunn said. “Then we custom-built a carbon-fiber seat off of the stock seat pan, following the lines of the diamond tail.”

Like MNNTHBX, Steady Garage opted to retain the Navi’s signature storage area, though they did trim the pod down for a narrower profile; the box can also be removed and replaced with a handy molle panel. The bodywork is all custom-painted, and it’s all highlighted by what Dunn admits was a relatively last-minute addition: “illuminated pinstriping” achieved via LED strips that change colors, giving the effect of a rolling neon sign.

REAL-WORLD CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONSFor Navi owners interested doing their own customization, both MNNTHBX and Steady Garage will offer several of the components used in their Navi projects, and Vance & Hines has developed a tapered exhaust system for the bike. In addition, Honda Signature Accessories is offering special graphics kits that were developed in a pair of collaborations – one a vibrant, colorful version designed by edgy Portland gear manufacturer Icon and the other a Viper Urban Camo version designed by South Carolina hunting-apparel company TrueTimber.

Attendees at this weekend’s IMS Outdoors show can see the custom bikes in person at Honda’s booth. New riders will also have the opportunity to try out the Navi at the show’s Ride With Us Moto Intro program, organized by the Motorcycle Industry Council.