It’s something we’ve all thought about before — how good would it be to have a vintage race bike with the reliability and power of a bike from today?

Sadly, most bikes that are known for their vintage good looks are an absolute pain to work on, and, conversely, most modern bikes that are renowned for their fun factor leave a lot to be desired in the styling department… so we decided to take things into our own hands, and build something that would turn heads with the way that it looks, but also be capable of keeping up on group rides without worrying about maintenance schedules or sourcing hard-to-find parts.

As a donor bike, a 2019 MT07 was selected for its reliability, power (we’ll get to that soon), and willingness to take on the plethora of aftermarket parts that come in every possible style.

Chasing a little more than the factory 52 horsepower, we initially tore down the bike to derestricted the intake manifolds, the throttle plate, the air filter, and the intake lid.

After freeing up the intake side of things, we coupled this with a handmade pie-cut stainless exhaust system that replicates our standard CP2 exhaust system mated to our Shorty muffler, while also adding a resonator into the merge. The addition of this resonator gave us an exhaust tone that was both deeper and quieter, allowing us to run a baffle-less setup that produces better power (compared to our competitors), while also being a few decibels quieter than our standard no-baffle system.

With the intake & exhaust taken care of, we flashed a custom tune to the ECU, and fitted up a new set of sprockets with a shorter ratio for those sweet sweet legal speed shenanigans (on a closed circuit of course). The weight savings primary come from the exhaust, a lithium battery, some carbon fibre replacements of steel parts as well as the significantly lighter tail & electronics package. Whilst some weight was added, the front fairing weighed in at less than 2kg inclusive of its machined fairing stay, which ends up being barely heavier than the stock headlight & surround.

While extracting extra power from the CP2 was a fairly straightforward affair, the bodywork, on the other hand, proved to be a bit of a pain.

Style-wise, we opted for a “half century” theme, taking styling queues from the Art Deco/streamline moderne movement of the 1920s, the cafe racer curvaceousness of the 1970s, and our more modern approach to form that we’ve used across multiple custom bikes to this day.

Green, charcoal, gold, and bronze accent colours highlight the pretty wide (and eclectic) colour palette we decided on, and while it’s always a roll of the dice to see if what you’ve envisioned in your head will actually look good “in the metal”, I'm proud to say this one just simply works. Pale gold line work designed for RC30 replicas laid onto the green tank and charcoal tail and fairings nicely, blending the pallets whilst directing your eyes across the bike seamlessly.

The tank covers and front fairing were purchased as a kit, but after initially fitting it to the bike and finding it to be a flimsy beyond belief, we realised it needed to be reinforced, and to have all of the included mounting hardware replaced with custom bracketry to suit.

The front fairing stay also required extra bracing, and while we were fabricating a solution for this, we also added a 4" halogen headlight from a ‘90s-era Honda CBR250RR to give the bike a different, more vintage aesthetic on the front. Large radiator guards were fabricated out of cardboard, then aluminium, and then fibreglass to round out the front-end bodywork from a visual standpoint, while also providing a nice area for your legs to squeeze onto when riding in a tucked position. These side fairings proved to be the visual connector that allowed the tail and the front fairing to work well together, whilst also removing any heat from your thighs whilst riding. We finished these off in our charcoal metallic with our Kelpi cutaway topped in green. Finally, we used these fairings as mounts for our Blindsider Bullet Indicators.

Lastly, 41mm clip-on bars from a Royal Enfield 650 provided the clearance we needed to get a comfortable riding profile that didn't have any clearance issues, and we fitted up our Hindsight mirrors to finish off the cafe racer look up front.

The fibreglass tail section required some reworking and reinforcing, but in the end it came out beautifully, and didn't necessitate any modifications to the bike’s frame itself. Underneath the tail section sits a Koso Hawkeye brakelight for increased visibility, while maintaining a subtle, vintage-inspired aesthetic.

The seat itself was hands-down one of the most involved custom seats we've ever done — featuring an escalating, hidden-diagonal-stitch ribbed design across both sides, and a ridgeback middle insert that flows back into the border design, the seat cover is topped over a gel base layer and two densities of foam in between.

The entire seat is finished in pale gold stitching, with all stitch lines perfectly correlating to the lines of the bodywork for the most finished look possible.

With the engine and bodywork sorted, we needed to round out the overall look and rideability of the build with the right handling package.

The OEM wheels were stripped and powdercoated in a bronze chrome finish, and we fabricated a stainless front fender in-house with the same colour powdercoat to match. The wheels are wrapped in Pirelli Rosso III tyres,

Forks were given the Dave Moss tuning treatment, while the brakes received Goodridge braided lines and upgraded rotors from Metalgear.

After spending many (many) hours reinforcing., prepping, and painting the bodywork, a full swathe of crash protection was added to help keep this bike (mostly) bruise-free — everything from axle sliders, case savers, Oggy Knobs, carbon fibre frame covers, and hard-mounted rearsets will mean that the bike can take a spill without damaging any paintwork.


Big thanks to the help from our suppliers and partners:

Mx Store

Skinnys Garage

RPM Moto

Metalgear Braking

John Stamnos Racing

Thermal Edge Coatings

Dave Moss

Yamaha Australia

Tyres for Bikes

Hostyl Fabrications

Pirelli Tyres

Oggy Knobs

GB Racing

Superbike Supply

Suspensions ‘R’ Us