Written by Martin Hodgson
Over recent months we have featured an influx of brilliant bikes coming out of SE Asia and there is no sign of slowing down. Riding the wave of the success they helped create, Malaysia?s Beautiful Machines no longer carries out service and repair work and is now strictly a custom bike one-stop shop. But having built some big dollar creations including a supercharged Harley show stopper, the team wanted to get back to basics. Enter ‘Kechik’, a mini monocoque masterpiece, from the very ordinary Honda CG125 comes this extraordinary little build.

But before we start it’s worth looking at what the CG125 is all about, a motorcycle produced by Honda to service developing markets around the globe. Back in the ’70s the engineers at the big H were given the brief to take the existing CB125 and make it more basic, more reliable and even easier to work on. And let’s be honest, it’s not like they were starting with a technological wonder to begin with. But having stopped counting sales figures at ten million, sold around the globe and being absolutely unbreakable, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been an amazing success.
So it should come as no surprise that in a chop shop in the back streets of Penang this particular bike, an ’80s model, was found looking tired and tatty but still running like a dream. ?Our friend has been following us and what we do, and he thought that this would be a fun project to s...