If you?ve been reading these pages for a few years now, you might recognize Eastern Spirit Garage from Poland. Every year or so, Sylwester turns out a beautifully constructed custom from often unpromising source material?notably the Honda CX500 or Suzuki?s GS series.
He has an eye for a good line; a CX500 from five years ago was a textbook example of a modern day cafe racer. Industrial designer Charlie Trelogan even used it for his seminal piece on cafe racer styling.

Eastern Spirit are now back with a new build, a GS550 inspired by a similar Suzuki that was a huge hit on EXIF a year ago. ?We put the blue GS on display in Warsaw and our client Zbyszek saw it,? says Sylwester.
?He contacted us to buy the bike, but it was already sold to a client in the UK. Zbyszek liked the bike so much, he wanted an exact replica, but I convinced him to make some changes and get different paint.?
The GS series was Suzuki?s first foray into four-stroke engine technology?and they got it right straight off the bat. The GS750 big brother was a favorite with road testers, and the GS550 was no slouch either: it was faster than the Honda CB550F Super Sport and even Suzuki?s own GT550 two-stroke.
Unfortunately, any GS still on the road these days is likely to be pretty tired, and so was the donor bike that Eastern Spirit finally managed to locate. So they tore down and rebuilt the 549 cc inline four, restoring the brisk original performance.

There?s a full complement of new gaskets and seal...