For most custom motorcycle builders, their creations are like their children: it’s impossible to pick a favorite. But sometimes there’s one project that stands out. For Luis Correia and his team at Maria Motorcycles in Portugal, it’s this immaculate Moto Guzzi Le Mans cafe racer.
Luis is proud of how it turned out, as he should be, not least because Maria?s 37th project was a mammoth undertaking. ?Unlike everything else we?ve done so far,? he says, ?it was a lengthy and complex process, jam-packed with stories and hurdles that we fought to overcome.”

?Estoril? started when a French customer got in touch late in 2013, enamored with a Ducati 750 SS that Maria had just built. After some back and forth, it was decided to build a classic cafe racer using a Moto Guzzi as a donor, rather than another Ducati. ?It would be a much more exclusive and different bike,? says Luis. ?Our proposal had as its epicenter the Le Mans MK1 model?a motorcycle whose history is associated with classic racing, and which already had plenty of commercial value.?

Maria’s client managed to source a Le Mans MK1 in Belgium that had already been modified somewhat. Luis? team would have preferred a stock donor to work with?but it had been hard enough to find this one, so they relented. When it arrived at the workshop, it turned out that it was more custom than they originally thought.
?Nothing was original,? says Luis. ?In fact, the bike had already taken part in classic t...