Turning motorcycle customization into a sustainable business is hard enough, but Marcus Walz has taken it to another level. His company, WalzWerk, has been in business for 32 years?and in that time, they’ve built no less than 1,000 custom motorcycles. You read right: one thousand.
Marcus is sure of that number, because WalzWerk is registered as a motorcycle manufacturer in Germany?and that means they have to record every single bike they build. ?We knew exactly when we would build our 1,000th bike,? Marcus tells us. ?And we’re talking about fully, built-from-the-ground-up bikes?not just slightly modified or customized bikes.?

WalzWerk’s first twenty years was mostly spent building a handful of custom Harleys a year. But they gained traction fast when they started customizing old BMW boxers. Right now they average around 100 builds a year?and 80 of those are airheads. Most orders are for WalzWerk’s signature ‘Schizzo’ BMW café racer builds, so Marcus picked that as the inspiration for the shop’s 1,000th project. His starting point was a 1990-model BMW R100RS, which he discovered was manufactured within a month of when WalzWerk was established.

The project kicked off with a full tear down of the donor bike. The frame was sand-blasted before the WalzWerk team de-tabbed it, and re-welded all the key structural welds to make it stiffer and stronger.
Next, they tore into the motor and transmission with a full rebuild of both. The k...