5 photos
Creating unique work in the world of custom motorcycles is a herculean task these days. That may seem hyperbolic, but if you look at how many custom cruisers, scramblers and cafe racers are on the road, they all start to basically look and sound the same. That’s not to say a select few custom bikes aren’t gorgeous; one need but look at Bike EXIF and it becomes abundantly clear. But aside from a paint job here and a cowling there, a cafe racer is a cafe racer. When you’re confined to the area between two wheels, to stand out you have to take a step back and challenge the status quo. Daryl Villanueva, founder of Bandit9 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is doing just that — in both design and execution.
Villanueva started Bandit9 Motorcycle Design back in 2011 as an escape, in a way, from the current bikes on offer on the custom market: “It sounds kind of cliché, but I wanted to do something different. What I see out there is kind of monotonous.” With big manufacturers like Ducati, BMW and Honda now mimicking the the old-school look custom builders have been using for years, it’s hard to disagree. To break from the pack, inspiration for Bandit9 motorcycles is conjured from “anything sci-fi,” said Villanueva. “Comic books, films, anything but motorcycles or cars. I’d rather look at planes… whatever NASA’s doing.” That’s not to say he’s against looking to the past for inspiration. But, in a weird time warp of design, Villanueva looks back to a time when imaginations were looking to the future: the Jet Age. Villanueva feels “things were much more exciting back then. We were aiming to go to the moon, breaking the sound barrier. There were cars in the ’60s that actually had jet engines in them! It’s kind of sad that we’ve lost that spirit.”
That ’50s and ’60s futuristic optimism is no more apparent than in Villanueva’s latest bike, the AVA. With a handcrafted, polished-steel unibody and streamlined design, the AVA looks more like George Jetson’s Sunday rider than a run-of-the-mill cafe racer. But where the Jet Age was all about power and outright speed, it doesn’t take a keen eye to notice the AVA gets push from a considerably small engine — a 125cc single, to be precise. Villanueva admits the engine choice is one of the few practical details on his bikes.
“First of all,” he said, “there’s an abundance of that size motorcycle here in Southeast Asia…and, if you look at the landscape of custom bikes, they’re all towards the larger-sized engines. Rarely will you see [engines below] 400cc. So I wanted to be on the opposite side of everyone else.” Today Kawasaki has a road bike spinning up 210 horsepower, and even entry-level modern bikes overpower some not-too-distant classics.
Villanueva was quick to add: “I get a lot of shit for that. People asking me, ‘Why don’t you build bigger motorcycles?’ But the truth is 125cc will take you pretty far.” It is true; with big brands that traditionally build powerful sport bikes — like Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki — now trying their hand at pint-sized, entertaining rides, Bandit9 might actually be ahead of the curve on the smaller engines. Smaller cc bikes are more nimble and feel more at home on tight city streets — they’re just more manageable day to day.
