Building custom motorcycles can be a tough game. And the Swedish builder Fredrik Pål Persson was ready to throw in the towel, just before the commission came in for this rather chic Honda café racer.
His shop, Malmö-based PAAL Motorcycles, has been operating for five years now. But last year, the business almost closed down. ?We basically hit rock bottom,? Fredrik admits.

?We were paying for costly mistakes we made, and we had to downscale everything. We sold everything we could sell, and held our breath to avoid going bankrupt.?
?When a client asked us to build a CB500, I was standing on a pivot. I could say no and close the shop?or say yes, while knowing that all profit had to go back into the company, and I wouldn?t be able to take out a salary.?
Fredrik decided to say yes. He also decided to sell his home and invest the profit into the company: ?I was basically buying one more year to follow my dreams.?
Since Fredrik was going all in, he knew that the CB500 would have to be one of the shop’s best builds to date. ?A bike that truly represents what we stand for as a brand here at PAAL,? he says. ?Design, craftsmanship, quality and performance.?

The donor?a 1976 CB500?was liberated from Fredrick’s own cache. It was a bike that he’d customized years ago, but he was never quite happy with it. It was a candidate for a complete makeover.
So the PAAL crew stripped the motor down (again), building it up with new valves and reworked cylinders. The eng...