There?s a term that was fashionable in MotoGP racing a few years ago: ?Aliens.? It referred to the small group of factory riders who seemed to operate at a higher level than everyone else, with astonishing speed and ability.
The custom world has its own Aliens, and we could probably all agree on the members of that group. But it looks like we have a new entrant: the Canadian builder Jay Donovan.

Jay is no grizzled veteran of the scene (sorry, Craig Rodsmith). He?s a young British Columbian in his mid-twenties, and the man behind Baresteel Design.
He?s based in the garden city of Victoria, and despite his tender years, has a quite remarkable ability to shape metal?a trait we noticed when we featured his Yamaha XS650 a couple of years ago.
Bobby Haas, the founder of the mindboggling Haas Moto Museum in Texas, noticed this ability too. And he gave Jay a commission to build a machine for the museum, with carte blanche on the direction.
?Jay and I cloistered ourselves in his shop and refined a life-sized sketch of what would ultimately become Stingray,? Bobby tells us. ?We tossed ideas back and forth all day long, and then I just handed the baton over to Jay.?

The task was formidable, and Bobby knew it. ?It is enormously challenging to infuse an e-bike with the aesthetics and romance of an internal combustion cycle,? he notes. ?You are deprived of most of the iconic visual elements of a classic motorcycle?carburetors, pipes and so on?and handed a bunch of battery boxes i...