A café racer is a lightweight, lightly powered motorcycle optimized for speed and handling rather than comfort – and for quick rides over short distances. With bodywork and control layout recalling early 1960's Grand Prix road racing motorcycles, café racers are noted for their visual minimalism, featuring low-mounted handlebars, prominent seat cowling and elongated fuel tank – and frequently knee
-grips indented in the fuel tank. The Scrambler’s roots lie across the ocean in England back in the late 1920’s, in the form of point to point races that favoured speed over rules. Competitors were tasked with racing from point A to B in the shortest time possible to win, conquering whatever terrain laid in their way to shave off those precious seconds. In a world before mass-produced dirt bikes, riders would have to convert their every day road bikes into grass churning, hill climbing beasts that could handle themselves on any surface – the rougher the better. Before long these ‘scramble’ races developed into closed circuit trials riding, motocross, and the Californian desert scramble, and by the mid 1960’s bikes more closely resembling the dirt bikes we see today began to go into production.
