Suzuki GS500 Cafe Racer by Motolifestyle

The Suzuki GS500 — an entry-level midsize street bike — is hardly thought of as racy or sexy. However, these bikes can be had for next to nothing these days. Sjoerd Veenstra of Motolifestyle decided to built a “low budget!” cafe racer on the platform.  As he told us:

It’s not about a badass custom. But more how you can build simply a unique bike out of a dime a dozen 90’s motorcycle with a low budget.

Below, he gives us the full story on the build.

GS500 Custom:  In the Builder’s Words

I saw it as a challenge to build a ‘low budget!’ well-shaped vintage-styled cafe racer out of a dime a dozen Suzuki GS500.

The GS500 is one of the motorcycle where you hardly can find the emotion. When I bought this one… It had a silver rusty frame, white wheels, loose hanging fairing… About everything on my GS500 was just ugly. Only the engine and the price was good!

If you watch all over the internet. It’s hard to find a fine-designed custom GS500. The main problem is: It’s difficult to create a good line in this bike. You have to watch out to not create a streetfighter style.

We started with the originally white wheels. They turned out really nice and got you motivated for the rest. The rusty frame needed to be more integrated in the motorcycle. That’s why we choose the classy dark titanium color on it.

We cut of the whole subframe and made a new one out of it. Lightly but critical designing the subframe gave the GS500 to shape it needed.

Clip-ons, cafe-seat, minimal blinkers, striping, a lot of paintwork, trimmed mudguard and eye-catching front fairing made this ugly duck into a classy budget custom.

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