Can a motorcycle ever be classified as a piece of art" The debate is endless, and there?s no right or wrong answer. For some, there is art to be found in the pure functionality of a race bike. For others, the pinnacle of creative skill and imagination is a build from Orange County Choppers.
Many cars have been appropriated for artistic purposes?from the BMW Art Car project to Janis Joplin?s painted Porsche 356. The art-meets-motorcycle club is much smaller, but its membership has just expanded with this Moto Guzzi V7 from the British designer Tom Dixon (below left) and the Italian American bike builder Stefano Venier (right).

?Tomoto? is an official project supported by the Mandello del Lario factory: It?s a fascinating one-off prototype that is not for sale, and will not be replicated. Dixon got involved because he?s a longtime fan of the marque: ?I?ve had the same Moto Guzzi for 27 years, and it was time for a new one,? he says. ?I’ve always tinkered with motorbikes. They were always kind of vintage or collapsing, and I learnt to weld on the basis that I was going to fix a bike.?

To get the show on the road, Dixon hooked up with renowned Guzzi builder Stefano Venier of Venier Motorcycles, who flits between his workshops in New York and Pordenone, a four-hour ride east of the Moto Guzzi factory.
?Tom had the vision of building a concept vehicle using simple and raw aluminum,? says Venier, ?but it was very complex on the fabricating and building side.? Veni...