Everything runs in cycles, fads come and go, what remains is the long term base. The Kneeslider is making a prediction here, I'm going on the record to say the huge fascination with choppers has peaked. Choppers will continue to be built and sold, money will still be made but the growth period is over.
Choppers are not functional in the way most motorcycles are, choppers are an art form. There is only so much you can do with wild paint and shaping metal before choppers all begin to look the same. Every now and then a builder will do something unique or sufficiently different to stand out but if you look at a hundred choppers they all begin to blur together.
Choppers have gone the high dollar and movie star route for some time which brought a lot of attention but the rich and famous are fickle and will soon start buying the next big thing. A lot of the buyers with enough dollars to follow the trends will fade away and it will no longer be cool to have a two wheeled chrome and billet piece of street art.
The tuner cars are facing this already. The Hondas and Nissans with monster wheels, huge sound systems, playstations and gullwing doors are fading while some of the performance mods remain. The young who like cars for what they can do will stick around, the ones who try to turn them into jewelry will move on. Choppers are like that. But in the world of motorcycles, what do choppers do, remove the glitz and what remains? Their whole point and purpose is appearance.
I'll be adding to this as the days go on, but remember, you heard it here first.
Travis Truman says
God, I hope you’re right. What worries me is what the replacement will be. Pimped out cars and bikes will be replaced by what, pimped out RVs, hot rodded Segways maybe hydrogen powered dragsters?
aaron says
i think “choppers” have peaked long ago. custom bikes, on the other hand, will stay big for a long time yet. and most of them will sport air-cooled v-twins, american style (although often foreign made). check out recent bikes by goldammer, kruger, and “anima” by (i think) hold-up-choppers
you get steep rake, short wheelbase bikes that could be sporty with a few mods. (and a single sided swinger front-end on anima!) tall bikes (the true chopper style) are not all that common even in mags like HOT BIKE. the long low pro-street look is the big style now. if only the forks weren’t mounted at 45 degrees…
next trends in custom bikes…
normal ergo’s, light weight, good handling, new engine configurations, less arguing father-son teams, less tv shows, factory custom will becom reality, rapid prototypers will allow complex castings to be made in a day or less at a reasonable cost (in this context).
hoyt says
A friend of mine just emailed me an eBay link to a Speed Triple engine.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?
ViewItem&category=35595&item=4543387540&rd=1
I like the stock triumph frame a lot, but if you are starting with just an engine, I would look to Steelheart Engineering for the masterpiece frame or other frame shops listed by the Kneeslider
ebay Triumph engine = ~ $1000.00 – $1250.00
Steelheart chassis = ~ $3000.00
high-end suspension = ~ $3000.00
build labor + custom tank, tail, fenders= ? $4000 ?
rubber, lighting, etc.
one of a kind custom street bike to be ridden hard in the “curves”…..priceless.
Bargain pricing considering many one-off (exclusive) custom choppers start at $40,000.0
hoyt says
suspension is off by 6-7k dpending on the level.
build labor is off too.
The big savings is in the engine compared to 10k aftermarket vtwins. The chassis seems to be a bargain.