Once upon a time, customizing a sportbike meant ripping its fairings off, swapping out its handlebars, and calling it a streetfighter. But things have changed for the better. Nowadays, custom builders are taking 80s and 90s sportbikes, and amplifying their retro radness with well-judged mods and upgrades.
Craftsmen like Marc Bell are leading the charge. Marc’s specialty is high-end metal fabrication for designers, architects, artists, and the like. But he’s also a track racer and retro sportbike nut?so you’ll find him building machines of that ilk under the name HAXCH Moto.

His latest project is a tastefully modified 1988 Suzuki GSX-R1100 J?commonly known as a ‘slabside’ in Gixxer circles, for the plastic slabs that flank the rear half of the bike. Those panels are gone now, but much of the Suzuki’s late 80s DNA still remains. ?The build started off with an enquiry from Ossi, a guy in Switzerland who’s wanted a slabside since he was a kid,? Marc tells us. ?He had a fascination with them when they came out in 86, and now, aged 50, he decided it was time to commission his own custom slabby.?

?Ossi had seen a previous Haxch Moto slabside build and wanted his own. The brief was to keep it classic in style and race-inspired, but to subtly make it a standout build, with all of the possible performance upgrades to make it as light and sharp as possible. I build a lot of bikes for racing and track use, so I went straight to suspension...