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Chabott Engineering MV Agusta 750 by Shinya Kimura Shinya Kimura gained world-wide recognition in the 1990s as the founder of Zero Engineering, Japan, creator of some of the most beautiful retro styled customs and cafe bikes the sport had ever seen. His trademark style paid homage to the old American V-twin motorcycles you might find sitting in the back of a barn for 30 or more years, then revived back to life with period correct parts and a hand fabricated gas tank, fenders and brackets. These were motorcycles for the pure art and soul of motorcycles. They had nothing to do with gleaming chrome, gloss paint, high performance, or the now bygone trendy chopper style. Shinya's were raw, rough, sexy, rumbling monsters of fire breathing scrap metal. And they were beautiful. The year was 2004 and Shinya Kimura arrived in America at the LA Calendar Motorcycle Show with his newest creation, a customized Harley panhead bike equipped with modern disc brakes that garnered Best Of Show and left the chrome chopper crowd mumbling this wasn't want custom bike building was all about. A year later actor Brad Pitt was seen riding the winning Shinya’s bike from home to work at the studios every day. Since then, the chopper craze has gone the way of the dinosaur, and Shinya's latest builds have continued to win awards at every show they go to, and have appeared every year in the renown FastDates.com Motorcycle PinUp Calendars. Shinya became independent from Zero and came to America in 2006 to set up his own shop called Chabott Engineering located outside Los Angeles in Azusa, CA. One of Shinya's latest builds is this 1974 MV Agusta 750S named "Blue-One" which was built from a MV America model that his friend had one for sale. MV Agusta has been one of his icon bikes and he has a great respect for the original.
“The old MVs are rare and collectible nowadays. However, the one I chose was not the ‘one and only prototype’ nor a ‘valuable racing bike with history’, it was still one of a production bikes. Plus, it wasn’t my intention to customize all the existing MVs. I have great respect on the original design and I customized one of them in a spirit of their original ideas.” The 750S originally sold in America form 1972-75 at a then supercar price of $6,000. It's legendary DOHC in-line four cylinder engine was derived from the world GP championship winning MV Agusta roadracers of the 1960s, the bikes that Honda was strongly aware of their magnificence and was inspired by when they went GP racing. The 743cc engine features a 56mm x 56mm bore x stroke, 10.2:1 compression, and is rated at 72bhp @ 9,200rpm. Honda and the other Japanese motorcycle manufacturers would later put MV and the other European manufacturers out of business with street bikes like the Honda CB750 which offered better performance and reliability for a lot less money. Besides its price, which could have bought 5 Honda CB750s at the time, the MV750S employed shaft drive which add a huge cost and weight (562 pounds dry) to a high end sportbike that didn't need it. The most notable feature of "Blue-One" is Shinya’s hand fabricated aluminum fuel tank, front fairing, fender and rear seat cowling. If you know what the MV America's original fuel tank and bodywork looked like, you'd say "great improvement". Shinya leaves the hand hammered aluminum mark in the raw with no filler, primer and paint to hide the imperfections, attached to the bike with carved brackets and exposed screws. If Harrison Ford rode a bike in Bladerunner, this would be it. The other piece de resistance on "Blue" is the huge 250mm Fontana replica twin-leading shoe front brake. The America came stock with then, trend-setting disc brakes front and rear, but replacing the front disc with the big Fontana just looks right. Both wheels laced to 40-spoke Akront alloy rims. The suspension uses the original style Ceriani 35mm telescopic forks on the front, and the original shocks out back have been replaced with more modern Ohlins gas charged shocks. The "Blue-One" performs as good as it looks now, 40 years later. Shinya recently rode it at the May 2012 Quail Lodge Motorcycle Gathering held in Carmel, California, including the 110 mile Friday ride that concluded with a couple of laps around Laguna Seca Raceway. Then on Saturday it was parked on the lawn at the Quail Lodge, just as a spectator's ride-in bike, but the event's knowledgable judges noticed it immediately and awarded it the Custom/Modified 1st Place Trophy. and the Cycle World "Elegance in Action" Award. A month earlier I had photographed the bike behind Shinya's shop, Chabott Engineering, in Azusa, CA, for the FastDates.com Calendars, with its official "World Premier" taking place at the 2012 LA Calendar Motorcycle Show in Jul
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