If you want to earn a living in the custom business, scale is everything. Reinventing the wheel with every build will be expensive, unless you have a rock solid client base or a wealthy collector on speed dial.
Most savvy builders replicate the parts they use for one-off customs, but Johnny Nguyen of Upcycle Motor Garage has taken the concept a step further: he?s built two BMW R100s at the same time, creating a pair of sister bikes that are equally gorgeous in slightly different ways.

Johnny runs his one-man shop out of a small garage in Anaheim, California. ?I’ve been building bikes for the last three years,? says owner Johnny Nguyen, ?but I?ve worked on cars since I was 12?over 25 years now.?
Johnny always had a dream to build a R100, cafe racer style. ?There was a great opportunity to own two, so I decided to build them together,? he tells us. ?It became my mission to make them ?look the same, but different?.?
The bike with the stunning sea foam green paint is a 1988 R100RT, and the bike finished in classic silver and smokey brown is a 1982 R100RS, BMW?s first faired sportbike.
The engine is essentially the same in both?the famous Boxer twin, with a 980 cc capacity, 70 stout German horses on tap, and a five-speed ?box.

A whole set of mods are common to both bikes. The engines are sporting vintage-style valve covers and velocity stacks, and breathe out via pie-cut stainless steel exhaust systems.
On the silver RS, the 2-into-1 exhaust exits low on the righ...