Atlanta's Fuller Moto “Shogun” Custom Motorcycle Cuts Through Bone

There’s a lot of loose talk about “motorcycles as art” in this red-hot custom-bike moment, but sometimes the shoe fits. The very best builds have tremendous artistry applied, and a very few transcend the motorcycle genre, rising to the realm of art.

Bryan Fuller of Atlanta's Fuller Moto thinks he's finished with his "Shogun," but after eight years of collaboration between three artisans at the top of their game, perhaps (like DaVinci's dictum about art) the trio has 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 two years of patience from Japan. We haven't seen this level of attention to two wheels since Ian Barry's Falcons.

Like Barry’s outrageous creations, the Shogun’s overall 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. Intricate dragons carved—not cast or painted—on wheel rims and engraving on the interior of the hubs. Those were the first parts Fuller sent to Herrera, which he promptly refused. “Tay said, ‘Nope, can’t reach it, can’t be done,’ ” Fuller admits. “We argued cross-country for three 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,” Fuller explains. “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 four things you can do with metal—beat, cut, bend, join.”

The bones of the Shogun are pure Fuller Moto and built for speed, using his own custom chrome-moly frame and swingarm and hand-formed tanks. The engine was pumped to 600cc and the head flowed by John Kaase Racing. When the project has been complete enough to ride, Fuller has ridden it as a work in progress. “I rode it to Sturgis eight years ago as a café racer, before that was common,” Fuller says. “I was worried the Harley guys would beat me up!” Four years later, tank and seat 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 four more 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 taking the time,” Fuller declares. 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 three of us are in our mid-40s—we’ve apprenticed, we’ve been trained, and the bike is a combination of three 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.” Those wavy hand-carved lines, hammer dings, and scratches give the Shogun a wabi-sabi perfection and make it irresistible to the eye.