Rally Raider: A gleaming Yamaha WR450F by Le Motographe

The garage tools and techniques might be the same, but there’s not a lot of overlap between race and custom bike building. At the simplest level, it’s a Venn diagram, with ‘function’ in one circle and ‘form’ in the other. Occasionally a bike falls into that tiny overlap though, and the results can be incredible. This outlandish WR450F rally raid bike comes from the French outfit Le Motographe, and ramps up the style without sacrificing an iota of performance. The two founders of Le Motographe are product designer Jérôme Mawois and metallurgist Yvan Bertona. Their workshop is in the small...