Krzysztof Szews is a designer for a major German car manufacturer. His official job title is ‘Head of Exterior Geometry’?but when he’s on holiday, he dreams up custom motorcycles like this KTM.
Kris? fascination with bikes began when he was 16 and a motocross bike pulled a massive wheelie in front of him, away from the lights and all the way down the street. Kris was instantly hooked on the idea (and sound) of a big four-stroke thumper.

While on holiday in the Canary Islands two years ago, he remembered the incident and started sketching in Photoshop. He decided to build a vintage-inspired scrambler, mixing traditional craftsmanship with modern manufacturing techniques.
Back home, he found the perfect donor: a 2005 KTM 640 LC4 Supermoto. He rolled it into his workshop, about half an hour east of Munich, and within thirty minutes, the thumper was stripped to the bone.
Kris tackled the project with the same process he uses at work: ‘Proportion, surface, detail.’ So his first task was to replace the KTM’s bodywork, starting with the fuel tank.
A Honda XL250R fit the bill beautifully, so he ‘gently’ hammered out the tunnel to fit over the chunky frame, and set it up. The new tank didn’t gel with the stock placement of the KTM’s radiator, so Kris had to move it lower down.

Next up was the rear end. Kris lopped off the stock subframe’s unsightly square tubing, and designed a 1? tubular steel subframe, inco...