FULL WORKS

In January 1982, David Bailey stood in an airport hangar next to a wooden shipping crate, anxiously waiting to see what was inside. His mechanic, Paul Turner, jammed a crowbar into the seam of the lid. The wood cracked and splintered and the nails squeaked as they bent to reveal the contents: a “works” motocross bike. The smell, the look, the unpainted pipe, the red plastic, the blue seat that drifted high up onto the aluminum gas tank—the image of the moment is burned into Bailey’s mind. It was rolling exotica: a handmade motorcycle composed of rubber and plastic—and metals most people had never heard of.

The subframe was removable, the cone exhaust was unpainted and hand-formed, the airbox was aluminum, the swingarm extended, the silencer stubby, and the welding job on both was of masterful quality; the “lowboy” fuel tank transitioned from red to black and dropped all the way down to the engine cases, giving it a low center of gravity; the left-side kickstarter disappeared into a niche molded in the fuel tank.

“It was coolest thing I’d ever seen, and it was mine,” Bailey says of