It’s no secret that we’re big fans of street trackers and supermotos here at BikeBound. And we aren’t alone — so are you guys, our readers. After all, nearly half of the machines that made our list of the Top 10 Custom Motorcycles of 2019 fall into one of these categories or the other, including John Green’s Honda XR600R, Garett Wilson’s KTM 640 Duke II, and Le Motographe’s Yamaha WR450 “Skeleton V2” — just to name a few. Se decided to follow up with a list of the most popular street trackers and supermotos we featured this year, based on traffic and social shares.
Without further ado, here are the BikeBound Top 10 Street Trackers and Supermotos of 2019, presented in alphabetical order by builder.
KTM 300 by Akin Moto
Max Duff, the founder of Death Collective and Akin Moto, has been obsessed with motocross and action sports since an early age: “I’ve always wanted an angry 2-stroke that can be legally ridden on the road. You just don’t see them that often and there’s nothing like the glorious sound and smell that comes from a 2-stroke!” He enlisted the help of his friend Nigel Petrie of Engineered to Slide to create one of the most stunning two-stroke street trackers we’ve ever seen, built from a low-hour 2011 KTM 300 EXC. Unlike most such builds, this one gets used both on the street and the track.
Husky 501 “Silver Wolf” by AMS Garage
Bali’s AMS Garage is celebrating its 10th anniversary in business this year, specializing in fabrication, customization, engine rebuilding, blasting, painting and air brushing. For this build, the customer wanted to transform his Husky 501 into a flat tracker. The most striking aspect of the build is the aluminum bodywork, including the single piece that stretches from tank to tail. It’s formed out of raw 3mm aluminum finished with silver leaf. Aptly enough, they named this Husky tracker “Silver Wolf.”
Yamaha XT500 “Project X-Tracker” by Jerrett Bellamy
Jerrett Bellamy, a 33 y.o. mechanical engineer from Ontario, Canada, has raced BMX, flat track, supermoto, and cross country. Today, in addition to his engineering day job, he runs MOTO-cycle Metal Works on the side: “I make various art/functional pieces out of old bicycle and motorcycle parts. The majority of the build was funded through that.” Believe it or not, Jerrett’s father owned this very same bike when he was a kid, putting more than 30,000 miles on the clock before he sold it. Fortunately, the ’77 XT stayed in their hometown of Port Elgin, and they got it back some four years ago. After an engine rebuild, Jerrett tore the bike down to create the build you see here, Project X-Tracker: “The goal was to keep it simple, clean and balance a mix of modern performance parts and vintage character of the bike.”
Beta 350 RR “The Meta” by HIDE
Max Ingelrest is the founder of HIDE, a small workshop based in an old distillery outside Brussels, Belgium. Says Max of his work: “The bike is for me the ultimate object in customization and passion.” This bike, dubbed “The Meta,” is a street-legal custom supermoto built from a 2013 Beta 350 RR Factory Edition — a race-spec 350 enduro developed with input from the official Beta factory teams. Max utilized such wide-ranging components as a Yamaha XT tank and skateboard deck seat pan to transform this enduro into a street weapon.
Yamaha XS650 Shell Racer by Josh Keel
Josh Keel is a native Californian who grew up around motorcycles. When his brother, accomplished builder Jeff Palhegyi (www.jpaldesign.com), invited him to the 2016 Quail Motorcycle Gathering, Josh got the two-wheeled building bug. With this XS650, he decided to build a tribute to the Shell Racing Specialties machines, a street-legal framer that pays homage to the Shell Thuet trackers of Wayne Rainey and Eddie Lawson. The bike is built on a J&M Racing frame, with motogadget electronics and an exhaust hand-built to mirror the pipes on the Shell race bikes. The paintwork is by artist Hal Tacker, a motocross and flat track racer in the 60s and 70s, who hand-lettered the tank. We especially love how purely track-focused the build looks, a deliberate design move: “I wanted the bike to look as little street legal as possible by hiding the signals, tail, and headlight as much as I could.”
KTM 400 EXC “La Caleña” by Lolana Motos
Lolana Motos of Bogotá, Colombia, opened shop in 2012, specializing in resurrecting and modifying classic bikes. This build, based on a 1993 KTM 400 EXC, took more than 1.5 years to complete. It ended up being one of the shop’s most challenging builds, as one of the design constraints was that all modifications could be reversible. What’s more, the EXC was not a street-legal machine to begin with — so indicators, brake lights, a horn, or other such electronic necessities had to be incorporated into the design. Fortunately, the shop’s hard work paid off, as the bike won third place in the 2019 Custom Built Show! The nickname, “La Caleña,” is the nickname for someone from Cali, Colombia — the home of this beauty.
Yamaha XT600 Retro Motard by M.A.M.
François and Eric of Motocyclettes Artisanales Minimalistes (M.A.M.) have been friends for some 25 years — since boyhood — and they seek to find their way back to the true, traditional heart of motorcycling. For this build, they took the motorcycles of the 1970s — especially the XT500 — as their inspiration. They spent more than 800 hours on this build, creating nearly everything from scratch, including the bespoke aluminum bodywork and the very frame itself — only the engine remains intact from the original 1983 XT600E donor bike! The result is one of the most beautiful, functional customs we’ve seen — a retro-inspired, short wheelbase, 264-pound motard that begs to shoot down the backroads and through the countryside.
Honda XL200 “Bullfighter” by Matador Motor Co.
Elet Hall of Istanbul’s Matador Motor Co has been working on bikes ever since he bought his first ’84 Honda CB700S at the age of 17, but he’d never built custom bike. However, opportunity came knocking soon after he moved to a village on the outskirts of Istanbul with his girlfriend: “I needed some wheels to get out and explore my new home so I was stoked when she told me she had an old XL200 sleeping on the porch of her mom’s apartment.” He nicknamed this XL200 tracker “The Bullfighter”: “The name for the bike comes from Istanbul’s insane traffic. I planned this bike to rip through the mind-numbing traffic and run me out to the woods on the weekends, it’s my ‘BullSh!t fighter’.”
Bultaco Frontera 370 “Renovatio” by Nitro Cycles
Antonio Testillano of Spain’s Nitro Cycles says of his family-run workshop:”We are a family moved by fuel. Our relationship with bikes and cars is an absolute madness. Specially with classic ones. We try to build them lighter and faster!” This stunning Bultaco Frontera 370 street tracker combines the heritage and two-stroke charisma of the original machine with modern wheels, brakes, and suspension. Antonio calls the bike “Renovatio,” since the donor was in rough shape and they completely restored the engine, bringing the old Spanish Bul back to life.
Hooligan Sportster “Good Riddance” by Rivertown Custom Cycles
Mirko and Nena Nicic, the husband/wife duo behind Croatia’s Rivertown Custom Cycles, have 50+ years of combined motocross racing experience. Today, Nena races in Sultans Of Sprint, the European drag racing series that pits vintage-style custom bikes head-to-head on strips, closed roads, and circuit straightaways around Europe. For her sprint racer, the duo decided to shoehorn a high-comp Buell 1203 Thunderstorm engine into the frame of a 1987 Sportster. It was a time-intensive, laborious process, but the end result was well worth the effort. Nicknamed “Good Riddance,” this Buell-powered Hooligan Sportster is now making its way around Europe, racing in the Sultans of Sprint series and flat track events such as Germany’s Krowdrace.
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