Some motorcycles lend themselves to customization, and need just a few tasteful mods to look great. But the Honda CX500 is not one of them. Sure, there’s potential there?but you have to know how to extract it.
Harry Blaise Fryer has cracked the code. Built with help from London’s Jackson Motorcycles, his CX500 is a textbook example of how to turn Honda’s plastic maggot into a handsome café racer.

Harry and his brother, Danny, have been obsessed with bikes since childhood. Danny lives in California now?but Harry works at The Bike Shed in London’s artsy Shoreditch district, where he’s surrounded by beautiful machines all day. The brothers had the idea to build a custom Honda after Harry’s 1978 CB550 was stolen. The first step was to trawl the web for inspiration. ?One thing I did notice, is that I hadn?t seen a custom Honda CX500 that I liked,? Harry tells us. ?The CX500 is a notoriously ugly bike, and the ergonomics make it hard to make appealing changes.?

?This became our goal: to take an original CX500 and create something completely unique, that complements the engine the way it should. The bike had to look like it was designed for speed but retain its certain classic qualities.?
With input from Danny, Harry printed out a dozen A4 copies of the side view of a stock CX500, and started sketching. By combining the best features of the best customs they’d seen, and adding their own flavor, they settled on a final design. Then i...