We’ve learnt to never underestimate garage builders. After-hours projects are usually executed with little money, but an abundance of time?and that sparks creativity and ingenuity.
This home-built cafe racer is sharp and minimalistic, but it’s also a bitsa of the highest order. Using a crashed 1996 Honda CBR900RR Fireblade as a donor, builder Leo Poulsen built it up with a mash up of parts that’s borderline genius. Oh, and it’s the first build out of his home garage, too.

Leo started out as a car mechanic back in the day, before working as a motorcycle mechanic, and later workshop boss. Now he’s passing his skills on to the next generation at a technical college, while wrenching on bikes at night, in his 30-square-meter home garage in Jutland, Denmark. ?Working with bikes in the late hours is like therapy for me,? he says. ?Working in my workshop, good music on the radio and a cup of coffee and all the difficulties of the day seem to disappear.?

The 1990s Fireblade is an unlikely donor for a cafe racer, but Leo reckons the principles are the same. ?This is my point of view on a modern cafe racer,? he explains, ?trying to be true to the spirit of the original cafe racers of the sixties. Making a stock bike lighter, faster and of course cool looking?all of this inside a reasonable budget.?
?The goal of this project was to make a bike usable for an everyday ride, and still capable of doing a decent lap time on an occasional track day.?

Mos...