I’ll let you in on a little secret: the Bike EXIF team doesn’t always agree on what’s hot and what’s not. But no motorcycle has polarized opinion as much as this whacky Yamaha XS650.
In the end, fun and goofiness prevailed. And so we present Bonanza Krad, a bicycle-inspired Yamaha, from the hands and minds at Germany’s Benders Company.

Based in Wiesloch, Benders is a five-man team founded by Christian and Raphael Bender. The brothers grew up fiddling with bikes, selling them to finance new projects or to travel.
For this build, they went right back to their youth?drawing inspiration from the Kynast Bonanza bicycles of the 60s and 70s?a kid’s chopper bike popular in Germany, similar to the American Schwinn Sting-Ray and the British-made Raleigh Chopper.
?A customer came into our shop with his old XS650,? Christian tells us. ?He’s a journalist, musician and painter, and in the discussion about what he does, we shared some stories from our childhood. We talked about Bonanza bicycles, and the idea of a ‘Bonanza Krad’ was born.?
Even though the idea was totally left field, Benders still wanted the 1981-model Yamaha to be as much fun to ride as possible. So they tore into the motor first, boring it out to 750 cc. The rebuild included new pistons, revised compression, a new ignition, and a switch to a 270 degree firing order.

They also installed better carbs, and fitted a pair of K&N filters. Under the hood, they ...