Everything in Switzerland is a tad different. An extraordinary lively biker-community faces a government that is about to discipline bike-riding much more than neccessary and almost to a total end. This is the feeling you get when you look at all the rules that are officially meant to make biking safe and protect the biker from himself. During the Show of Swiss Moto and Swiss Performance that topic was really the emphasis. And to make it worse the rules of the motorcycle emissions, called Euro 3, are going to become tighter.
But there also were innovations to entertain the visitors, especially the riders of the Indoor-Stunt-Worldchampionship.
Christian Pfeiffer, one of the best known riders among the stunters, knew it would be hard to repeat his success. Last year 16 builders initiated the Swiss contest from null. Because of its success in 2008, there were a couple of the best builders worldwide to be welcomed. They all wanted to take part in it and pulled the throttle. Humberto Ribeiro, Narcis Roca, AC Farias and the Hungarian “Helldriver Mokus” Balázs Herczeg showed their best. The Irish stuntman, Mattie Griffin, stunned the viewers with his backflip off the driving motorcycle and his frontal downswing over the frontend. Mokus flipped his whole bike while sitting on it. They all came up with perfect shows and exciting tricks.
The jury’s task was hard to handle. The very last round made the difference. Again Chris Pfeiffer was able to beat them all with his program on his BMW. The party after that was hot. Chris celebrated in a stunter’s way. He rode several laps with the flag-presenting-cheergirl sitting on his shoulder, doing wheelies and stoppies.
The area of the stunt-contest and the Swiss Performance was huge, spreading over a whole exhibit-hall. Packed with a lot of hot steel and cool designed bikes. The Swiss Performance is the most important show for the Swiss tuners and according to that it was our duty to show up.
Show-coordinator and mastermind, Ruedi Steck, brought the Saltlake-speedweek-flair to Switzerland. He presented his 2 x 8 records from Bonneville. In the focus of the exhibition was the fastest bike of the world, California’s Sam Wheeler took his record-bike “Streamliner“ to Zürich, which ran a speed of 355.303 mph on the Bonneville-flats. Even famous Fritz Egli was caught saying, “Nice bike. I’m always thinking that I never took part in Bonneville…“ Something to expect in the future?
Sam didn’t make it to the record in 2006, because his front tire blasted at the speed of about 300 mph. But this run was duly noted as the fastest speed ever ridden on a motorbike. Sam now breathed clean Swiss air for three days and was excited about the designs and quality that were shown at the show.
Sam watched the bike-buildoff between “Streetfighter Team” and “Seven Cycles.” Seven Cycles stripped a new Softail to the parts and started rebuilding a complete custombike from that, in three days! The “Streefighters“ guys, from Interlaken, brought a well prepared GSX-R to the show and ended up completing this bike at the end of the build-off. That don’t mean it was easy to handle building a working cable-tree for a 4-cylinder speedbike.
Heavy work also for Markus Pfeil whose task it was to paint and design both of the bikes. One handed gold-plating while pinstriping the matte black custom-HD with the other hand means skills and talent. And coolness!What a man!
The bikeshow was designed in the spirit of the upcoming soccer-european championship and took place on a stylized soocerfield. There the bikes of show courted for attention. Germany vs Swiss is a final classic in soccer – and before it took place at Zürich, the victory going to Germany, back in '54.
Now the result read 2:1:1. In the list of winners a well known Austrian customizer had two runners up. Penz Custombikes won first prize with their “Erebus“ for Airbrush-design, well done by artist Marcus Pfeil. Far in front also was the “Passion of Christ“ in this category, covered with christian motives from the so titled film on each and every part of the bike, even the motor.
In the field of the Feestyle-Bikes nobody could reach the class of the show’s posterbike “Twintrax“ of Christoph Madaus. His double-twin-engine-monster caught the masses.Also a class of its own was the “Precious“ by Ronny Stöcklin from Swiss. He built this modern boardtracker together with Bela Börden from Classic Bikes at Oberwil: more than 3.000 blinging gemstones had been attached to this bike, all mounted in tiny sockets each!
The shining jewel-bike is not planned to be driven. It is thought to be the promotionbike for a factory that builds jewelry, though it could be taken out for a ride with its powerful RevTech and the well produced suspension.
Like a bunch of other bikes from the Swiss Performance, it will also be seen at the European Championship of Custombike Building during the Custom Chrome Europe Dealershow at Mainz in Germany. Right after it was taken to the Belgian Bike Weekend at Antwerp before Easter. Off to the next round. A hot 2008 for custombike-fans was just fired up!
Text & Fotos: Horst Rösler, Motographer.de, translation Andreas Kirsch, wikinger.com
Special thanks to www.SarahZoellner.de and Jürg Schäffli /www.indi300.ch
