Custom Motorbike Insurance

We can insure all types of custom motorbikes, but it’s not always just about the bike, other factors have a large influence on your bike insurance such as your motoring history and the security in place for your custom bike. Typical types of motorbike customisations that we can insure include:

• Bobber – where the front fender has been removed and the rear fender made shorter, ie ‘bobbed’
• Café racer – customised to improve its speed, cafe racers are lightweight too with unnecessary parts removed
• Chopper – crusier style, where unnecessary parts are ‘chopped’ often with high handlebars such as ape hangers
• Cutdown – refers to a scooter with unnecessary bodywork removed
• Scrambler – off-road style, upright seating position and usually some sort of knobblies for the tires, made popular with the Ducati and Triumph Scramblers
• Streetfighter – refers to a sports bike with its fairing removed

Custom bikes and factory customs are tailored to the requirements of the rider so they are likely to provide a better experience for the rider involved. Factory customs allow personalisation without compromising your warranty but bike customisation is now hugely popular and isn’t something you should be worried about declaring to your insurer (as long as they know their motorbikes!).

If having a say in how your motorbike looks, rides and feels is vitally important to you, getting one custom built is undoubtedly the way to go. This custom bikes feature stylistic and/or structural variations to the standard machines produced by major manufacturers, and encompasses bikes that are either unique or only produced in small numbers.

The first motorbikes labelled as ‘custom-built’ began to appear in the 1950s. The evolution of the ‘Chopper’ style of motorcycles in the 1960s was pivotal to the success of custom machines.

The story goes that upon returning home from World War II, American soldiers became dissatisfied with the heavy machines built by Harley-Davidson and Indian at the time, as they had ridden lighter or more versatile vehicles while they were in Europe.

These soldiers began experimenting with their bikes and “chopping” them by removing or shortening (bobbing) the fenders. The result was a new style of machines that looked cool with simple, clean lines.

Customising continued strongly from then on, and in the 1990s and early 2000s, expensive custom bikes became fashion as well as status symbols.

We are now experiencing a massive surge in the popularity of custom bikes, as the new-wave bike scene flourishes with places such as the Bike Shed and media such as Bike Exif being big players in the custom bike scene.