Retro bikes are coming back, baby – and that includes the 1980’s-chonk-meets-supersport-glory that is this new custom build.
Meet the “Slabshot” – a Suzuki bike sporting a GSX-R1000 heart and an estimated price tag of £25,000-£30,000 ($31,000 to $38,000 USD). Brit-based Londoner Marc Bell tells MCN that he always had a fondness for retro machines, but that the unreliability of the things were a real downside:
“I’ve always liked the older bikes… they look so nicely proportioned… if Suzuki ever did bring out a totally old-school GSX-R, it would do so well,” Bell says.
“I built [The Slabshot] as my ideal bike, but it’s not going to be one that I keep because I’ve proved the idea works.”
The process was, understandably, a more complex affair; starting from cardboard and gradually adjusting aesthetics to the final form on Photoshop (he went with classic endurance-style bodywork), Bell blasted the skeleton of a 2009 Suzuki GSX-R1000 with sodium bicarbonate (“soda-blasting”), surgically adding a custom billet aluminium top yoke “designed and CNC machined to look like race bikes of the 80s and 90s.”
Added to the bike were ‘hoover tubes,’ stopping duties in the form of Brembo M4 monobloc calipers, and an adjustable rear Nitron shock absorber at the back, with the welcome addition of the following:
- Clip-ons
- A quick action throttle
- Racing switchgear
- Braided brake lines
Want to own a Slabshot for yourself?
We’re told the thing is fully road-legal, and will be shown at the Bike Shed Moto Show at the end of May. Should things go to plan, “the Slabshot will then be going up for sale, with plans in place to produce a catalogue, including three retro colour schemes, before taking commissions to build more to order.”
With the recent trends lining up retro superbike fans around the block, we think these beauties will sell in short order, don’t you?