FIRE ROAD FLYER
Photographer and custom motorcycle builder Josh Withers of California is no stranger to taking on special requests from interested clients.
He’s the first to admit he isn’t getting rich from the motorcycle part of his life, though. In fact, five years ago, when he had just finished one particular commissioned café racer, on social media he joked he’d made 10 cents an hour completing the build. “A guy made a comment that he’d pay me a raise of 15 cents an hour to build him a bike,” Josh recalls. “In jest, I wrote back and said, ‘Sure, I’d do that!’”
That guy is Bill Horntvedt of Michigan. Emails were sent back and forth, and several phone calls made. Josh says Bill wanted a BMW café racer based off of a R75/5 foundation but kept mentioning there were plenty of dirt and gravel roads near his hometown.
Josh says, “A café racer and dirt roads don’t add up, and we couldn’t really agree on what to build. But, I did start searching for a donor BMW to serve as the starting point for Bill’s project.”
He found a 1973 R75/5 in Palm Springs, California, that had been disassembled. It was being sold as a parts bike, and while driving back from
