Momoto SR500: blueprint for a budget cafe

Half a century ago, a café racer was a bike stripped to the essentials. Tuned for maximum performance over the short haul, it was usually a secondhand bike that didn’t break the bank—and was tweaked on a budget. These days, the true modern café racer is probably a ‘streetfighter,’ a battered GSX-R or Ninja stripped of its bodywork. But we prefer the charm of bikes like this German-built Yamaha SR500—a thoroughly modern custom with a nod to the classic British style of fifty years ago. It’s a 1979 SR500 belonging to Hannover-based Patrick Frey, an industrial designer with petrol running...