The popular Wheels and Waves festival returns to sunny Biarritz next week after a two year hiatus. So it’s safe to assume that some European workshops are frantically buttoning up their bikes to show off at the event?or to compete in the infamous Punks Peak hillclimb.
Newcomers Wayders are ahead of the curve though. They’ve just completed their first custom bike, a Yamaha MT-07 café racer, with time to spare. And it’s a knockout debut performance from the Belgian outfit.

Wayders is a two man crew, made up of friends Olivier Nadrin and Didier Hermann. Didier is the technical whizz; he owned the European chip tuning company, Tuning Box, for thirty years. Olivier’s background is in photography and videography, so he props up that end of the business. The guys first connected when they helped each other customize their personal bikes. They eventually launched Wayders, then cranked things up a notch earlier this year with a new 1,900 square-foot workshop, packing everything from heavy tools to a photo studio.

The Yamaha MT-07 is the first custom to roll out of the new shop, and was built purely to show off the company’s abilities. We’re more used to seeing XSR700 customs around here, but the guys specifically had the MT-07 in mind as a donor.
?We chose this model because it is in the top three of the most sold bikes in Europe,? says Olivier, ?probably because of its affordable price. We like the peculiarity of the bike’s frame, an...