Samurai Code: Fuller Moto's 'Shogun'

[Originally published in Cycle World, Nov.16 2016]

There’s a lot of loose talk about ‘motorcycles as art’ in this red-hot Custom bike moment, but sometimes, the shoe fits. That seems a function of time invested as much as styling or fabrication chops; with dozens of talented builders vying for global attention, some great, near-great, and not great motorcycles are delivered to your inbox daily. The best have tremendous artistry applied, and a very few – usually with years and thousands of hours invested – transcend the motorcycle genre, rising to the realm of art, where function no longer seems to matter.

Bryan Fuller thinks he’s finished with his ‘Shogun’, but after 8 years collaboration between 3 artisans at the top of their game, perhaps (like DaVinci’s dictum about art) the trio have merely abandoned the Honda CB550 in an exceptionally beautiful state. Fuller won’t add up the hours involved, nor the expense of working with a top-tier commercial graffitist (Totem) and master engraver (Tay Herrera) for so long; he only claims ‘This is the most expensive CB Honda ever.’ Even the handgrips, each thread woven then plaited by a traditional Samurai sword maker, took 2 years of patience from Japan. We haven’t seen this level of attention to 2 wheels since Ian Barry’s Falcons.

Like Barry’s outrageous creations, the Shogun’s shape is not the point; squint your eyes and it’s another well-done CB café racer. Zoom in on the details, though, and you’ll have a pleasant sequence of ‘oh s**t’ moments. I don’t recall seeing dragons carved – not cast or painted – on wheel rims before, nor any kind of engraving on the actual hubs. Those were the first parts Fuller sent to Tay Herrera, which he promptly refused; ‘Nope, can’t reach it, can’t be done’, says Fuller, ‘we argued cross-country for 3 weeks, and he still says carving the hubs was near impossible.’

The imagery Herrera carved was Sharpie’d onto metal by Totem, as Fuller finished parts and handed them to his fellow Atlanta artist. ‘The Kanji is all about the art of metal’, explains Fuller, ‘on the forks legs, one side is ‘art of’, the other side is ‘steel’. The headlamp says ‘illumination’, the ignition cover is ‘speed’, the clutch cover is ‘power’; the seat says ‘the god of wind’ – a little joke. The Samurai on the tank is fabricating in metal; on one side he’s cutting, on the other he’s welding up a Koi fish; portraying the 4 things you can do with metal, beat/cut/bend/join, that’s the usual metalworking theory.’ The story might be Metalwork 101, but the execution makes the Shogun itself a totem to the art of creation.

The bones of the Shogun are pure Fuller Moto and built for speed, using his own custom chromoly frame and swingarm, and hand-formed tanks. The formerly plastic Honda head- and tail-lamp buckets were cast in aluminum by Fuller so they, too, could be carved up. The motor was pumped to 600cc and flowed by John Kaase Racing, and Honda supplied racing CR controls and brakes, so the machine is Sho and Go, and when the project has been complete enough to ride, Fuller has ridden it as a work in progress. ‘I rode it to Sturgis 8 years ago as a café racer, before that was common – I was worried the Harley guys would beat me up.’

Four years later, when the tank and seat were finished, he returned to Sturgis for the ‘Ton Up!’ café racers exhibit I co-curated with Michael Lichter, and the Honda was already impressive. It took a further four years to make the Shogun a masterpiece. That’s hardly a viable production schedule, but to Fuller, that wasn’t the point; ‘The essence of building something really great is the time – how long does it take to write a great novel? If it took 20 years it didn’t matter.’

The Shogun is now for sale, but it was never about the money for Fuller, it was the remarkable collaboration with Totem and Herrera. ‘All 3 of us are in our mid-40s – we’ve apprenticed, we’ve been trained, the bike is a combination of 3 mature artists, which is really unusual. But it’s still really raw; there are a lot of flaws, but people aren’t perfect, and art isn’t perfect.’ But those wavy hand-carved lines, hammer dings, and scratches give the Shogun a wabi-sabi perfection, and make it irresistible to the eye. It was 8 years well spent.