2007 R6

As Gerry Spaeth, shop owner and muscle car builder, rounded a corner on his stock 2007 R6 in the Miranda, California, he ran into an obstacle that would become the unexpected catalyst of a custom build. In that corner's apex stood a deer. “I watched the bike skid down the road as I low sided to avoid the deer. Something caught the bike, and I watched it go end over end as it ripped into pieces. I could see the rear tire take the impact over and over. It finally landed in a ditch. When I stood the bike back up, the dog bones and rear links were bent so badly that it looked like the bike had a lift kit on it. It stood about eight inches taller. The worst part was that the frame was cracked,” said Spaeth. The junked R6 was then taken back to Spaeth's shop where it sat under a tarp in the back corner while he figured out what to do next. “Shortly thereafter, I bought a brand new GSX-R but it didn't compare. There was something about that R6 that I absolutely loved,” stated Spaeth, “Even when it was crashed and in the corner, I would pull off the tarp and jump on the bike was beat to hell, but it still felt so good.” The crash took this young hotrod fabricator down a path he had never been down before. “I’m a car guy; I grew up building a muscle car with my dad. I went to school to be a mechanic for cars and trucks. I had never built bikes, but I knew that I could do something special with this R6,” explained Spaeth. Spaeth quickly tracked down a new frame and methodically used his mechanical background to prep the bike for powdercoating. “I was going to vinyl wrap it, but did decided to go for the carbon fiber look. I pieced it together from companies that were from all over the place to find specific panels. It was tough, but I gathered bodywork from as far as Croatia to complete the one-off look.”