Modern Choppers

When you think about  modern choppers 3 companies come to mind: West Coast Choppers , Orange County Choppers and Choppers Inc.  Jesse James has been busy building his non-motorcycle TV persona, Billy Lane is looking at 6 years for manslaughter, and the Teutul family seems to have irreconcilable differences.  What is the future of choppers?

Old School Chopper

It’s important when you’re on this site that we distinguish the phrase “custom motorcycles” from “choppers” and “bobbers”. The original choppers were stripped of every unnecessary part and usually had the addition of a longer front end, whereas bobbers were a stock bike with the factory rake stripped of every unneeded part. I’m not sure if the word bobbers or choppers came first, and in the beginning I’m pretty sure they were interchangeable, but the subtle difference in the two words hold true.

When all 3 of the modern choppers companies started building bikes, they rarely had anything unnecessary on them: no turn signals, windshields, usually one mirror, maybe no front brake. A big sissy bar was a must in the old days even though that really didn’t fall under the description of being “chopped” but modern builders aren’t as keen on them as they once were.

OCC now puts DOT approved turn signals on every bike they build, which almost disqualifies them as being choppers, but I’ll give them a pass for extra rake and stretch. Even though the general public stills gives them their props; true bikers shy away from them more and more especially since they’ve gone into things like Marvel comics T-shirts, their own line of insurance, and any other numerous merchandising deals that just don’t ring true to bikers. I also think a lot of biker’s are pissed that Rick name isn’t even mentioned anywhere on the OCC site. Must be in the Fan Club area, but of course you need to pay $50 a year for entry into that.

Chopper

Since hard core biker Lane is headed for the jail, there’s really no way to say if Choppers Inc will even survive the next six years. While Billy may have stayed true to his biker roots while some of his fellow builder traded their “choppers rule” mantra for every dollar they could get their hands old at least they didn’t try to get away with killing a guy, and the general public surely will not be waiting for him when he gets released.

So does that leave Jesse James as the last universally known builder of real choppers? I guess so until Rick Petko decides to start up his own company. At least we know Jesse hasn’t changed. He’s still building tanks and fenders by hand, and actually canceled his first TV show just to get back into building bikes himself again. I’m glad Jesse’s still Jesse and the West Coast still builds choppers. Somebody has to.

Don’t worry, there are still plenty of guys building real choppers out there and eventually this site will cover them all.