Some builders pick a formula and repeat it. Others reinvent the wheel every time and stick to one-offs. Auto Fabrica‘s methodology lands somewhere in the middle, and it’s consistently produced spectacular results.
The British shop will typically pick a readily available donor bike, completely transform it, and then produce a few variations on the design, tweaking it as they go. But for their latest project, they’ve chosen a very unusual donor bike?the legendary Norton Commando.

Auto Fabrica’s client wanted a ‘Type 6‘?a Yamaha XS650 custom that that first surfaced three years ago. But Bujar, Gazmend and Toby weren’t keen on doing another XS650, so they?ve applied the styling cues of the ?6? to a 1971 Norton Commando. And it looks even better. ?We had to rethink our approach,? the boys tell us. ?It?s the first British bike we have worked on with an external oil tank. The inherent issue was: ‘Where do we put the oil, and still execute a design which is clean, and retains our Auto Fabrica DNA"’?

And so the ‘Type 16’ was birthed. But it certainly wasn’t an easy delivery?the guys had to strip the Norton down to nothing, and carefully plan their strategy. Then it was time to fabricate new aluminum bodywork.
?We reworked a lot of the frame so we could boat-tail the bodywork,? AF explain. ?We wanted the boat tail to be exaggerated on this particular bike, even more so than what we’ve done before...