Having a regular stream of customer work is a blessing and a curse. Sure, it puts food on the table?but it also usually means working to a brief and a deadline. And that can get pretty frustrating when you’re someone with an over-active imagination.
Patricio Castelli knows this hustle all too well. He’s based in Argentina, where he specializes in shaping aluminum for motorcycle and car projects. But his clients never commission truly radical stuff, so he occasionally builds something outrageous for his own delight.

And if you’re wondering just how outrageous it gets, how about an aluminum-clad scoot that looks like it rolled out of a 1950s sci-fi epic"
?The concept that surrounds the bike,? Patricio tells us, ?is the iconography of the space exploration of the 40s and 50s science fiction. I tried to respect those guidelines as the central axis of all the construction.?
Despite its bizarro appearance, this futuristic motorcycle is, in fact, fully functional. (Without lights it’s not street legal though.) Patricio started with a Zanella ZB 125?an Argentinian-made scooter that’s sort of a Honda Biz clone.
We originally assumed that he’d heavily modified the chassis and then simply wrapped it aluminum, but that’s not the case at all. All that’s really left of the Zanella is its 125 cc motor and automatic transmission.

Working from sketches, technical drawings and even 3D renders, Patricio built the rest of his creati...