About this time
last year (early spring-ish) there was a rumbling about an event that was
supposed to come together with the biggest money shot in custom motorcycle
history-$1 million. This was going to be the build-off of all build-offs,
nothing but the top names in the game, pulling out all the stops for what
could be a life-changing payout. Well, somewhere along the way things didn't
pan out and the plug was pulled on the entire event-no more build-off, no more
record-breaking payday.
We don't need to delve into all
the rumors, politics, and B.S. as to why the event dissolved; that's not
important. What is important is that many of the builders who were involved
had already started or were almost finished building their million-dollar
lottery ticket, with a lot of time, money, blood, and sweat invested. One such
builder was Joe Martin.
Joe's no stranger to our
publication; we've featured a couple of his bikes before, and all of them have
been pretty awesome. But this bike here, which he's dubbed "God Sin," is the
best we've seen from him...so far. The bike swoops and sweeps seamlessly from
wheel to wheel, as if the entire machine was formed from one piece of metal.
This was obviously not something that was just thrown together, and we wanted
to know how it came to be, so we gave Joe a call.
"This bike started off as a bunch
of ideas I've had in my head and had been wanting to do," Joe told us. "It was
going to be a cool opportunity with this million-dollar contest to do
something off the wall. I've kind of pigeon-holed myself into that swoopy,
long, low-seat thing, but I also like the older, traditional stuff. So this
was kind of a cross between a sci-fi/board tracker sort of thing. I had
sketches of it lying around the shop, but my customers want that long,
low-seat thing that I've been doing, so I hadn't really had the time to do
something like this until that contest came along."
The first thing we asked about
was the frontend-or more specifically, the cover around the headlight. "I made
the tins around the headlight by shaping 1/4-inch solid steel rod and making a
little buck. I formed it all around the upper legs and headlight and made a
skeleton, then I grafted in all the little individual sheetmetal pieces. I
like the look of the old FLs and exposed lower legs. It's like a futuristic
sort of deal or something like that. I dig Mike Maldonado's stuff, and this is
sort of a throwback to some of his style; he was sort of the inspiration in
the back of my mind for this bike."
We are seeing more and more
ground-up custom bikes and even modified H-Ds with 23-inch wheels, so we asked
Joe his reasoning on using a 23 for this project. "I wanted the bike to have a
big, dynamic appearance, to basically look like just wheels and a motor. I
wanted to scale the wheels up a bit. I thought if I went with a 21 the bike
would look real dinky. I like that little bike look too, but I wanted the
high-tech look of the big diameter wheels and minimal bodywork. Then I put
that Enginuity motor in there, and with its big, fat cylinders, the wheels
didn't make the motor look small, and everything scaled out nicely," Joe
stated.
We also asked about why he opted
to go fender-less. "I did put a fender on it, but it just had this unbalanced
feel to it, and I wasn't diggin' it. The open wheel thing is a radical look
and was more consistent with the minimalist idea; it just looked so sanitary
without fenders. That was the theme, minimal bodywork and intricate metal, but
very little of it," said Joe.