Written by Andrew Jones
?Gustavo from Pasquale and his dad are fucking legends. Just the absolute best.? That’s how our man Marlon Slack described the family powerhouse that is Colombia’s Pasquale Motors, and he’s harder to impress than a hangry Vladimir Putin. We don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the whole custom scene in Colombia looks to them for inspiration and guidance, and boy are they the right guys for the job. Asked to build a patinaed CB500 for Colombian KTM Dakar racer Santiago Bernal Mejia from a box of bits, here’s the results.

?We started this bike two years ago when Santiago came to us with a frame and a bunch of parts in boxes for his new CB500 four. The first step was gathering all the parts together and cataloging them so we knew what was missing, what we could use and what things we needed to order.? Understandably, In Colombia this is not an easy task. ?The next step was to catch up with Santi and decide what we wanted the project to be. He mentioned one of our favorite bikes, the ?Angelina? KZ400 that opened many doors for us.? It was actually featured right here on Pipeburn and it was the first bike that Gustavo and Esteban took to an overseas show.
Santiago and the boys wanted to build the Honda 500 with the same idea; clean lines and a low profile, but more focused on being a comfortable bike to ride and with better handling than the donor bike. ?We wanted to create balance between the original tank a...