Tangerine Dream: Roland Snel's Yamaha TR1 cafe racer

Every manufacturer has a few oddball motorcycles in its back catalog. Bikes that sounded like a great idea on paper, but never really caught the imagination of the public. In Yamaha’s case, one of those bikes is the TR1—a V-twin tourer from the 1980s, closely related to the more successful XV750. Fast forward thirty years, and an ungainly TR1 has become one of the best customs we’ve ever seen. It’s been given the cafe racer treatment by amateur builder Roland Snel, who’s taken inspiration from trailblazing Virago specialist Greg Hageman. Roland works for Yamaha in Holland. He’s not a professional...