A decade ago, the Californian outfit RYCA Motors cracked an almost impossible code: they figured out how to turn the Suzuki Savage into a good-looking cafe racer. Then they made a kit so garage builders could do the same, using just basic tools and skills.
It was a big success, and they?re now celebrating their tenth anniversary with a new ‘CS-1X’ kit that was designed using augmented reality. It?s an approach we?ve never heard of before, and quite intriguing.

In case you?re not familiar with AR, it allows you to superimpose 3D elements on top of real-world objects.
RYCA founders Ryan Rajewski and Casey Stevenson are fans of the tech, and have big plans for using it. It was Casey who first got the idea to combine AR and motorcycles a few years ago: when remodeling his house, he used basic AR apps from furniture retailers, and was impressed by how useful they were for visualizing ideas.
?I called my friend Yohan Baillot?now our CTO?who is a true pioneer in the field of AR,? he says. ?I told him I had been using the IKEA app, and asked him if we could do something with motorcycles. We built our first AR prototype based on a Ducati Scrambler, and it turned out great.?
?We got the ?virtual? parts to just snap right on, like magic. So when it was time to build a tenth anniversary edition of the CS-1, we wanted to use AR in practical, realistic ways. To prove it?s not a novelty or a toy.?

Casey and Ryan wanted to maintain the general aesthetic of their origin...