WEST COAST MIDLANDS CHOPPER

WHILE THE FASHION FOR THE US-STYLE BILLET CHOPPER MAY’VE PETERED OUT A LITTLE IN THESE DAYS OF BOBBERS AND 60s/70s CHOPPERS, THE BIKES THEMSELVES DO STILL HAVE THAT CERTAIN JE NE SAIS QUOI, DON’T THEY?

- NIK

Kiah Passey’s chop, the bike you see here, is one such machine. Originally built by the now legendary West Coast Choppers in the USA, it was originally white when he first saw it a while ago, and although he wasn’t too keen on the colour, he could see the potential in it so he bought it, and set about making it into the bike he could see it was destined to be one day.

West Coast Choppers (WCC), in case you don’t know, is a brand that began selling screen-printed T-shirts and stickers with the company’s Iron Cross (not Maltese, no matter what anyone tells you) logo while its founder, Jesse James*, was still at school, and purveyed accoutrements of the chopper lifestyle long before any actual West Coast Choppers custom bikes’d ever been built. Even after the company did begin building bikes for the likes of celebrities such as Shaquille O’Neal, Kid Rock and Keanu Reeves, 60 per cent of its revenue still came from sales of clothing, beverages and tools and, in fact, even though they built between 12 and 15 bikes a year, at prices of around $150,000, each actually lost money for the company, but helped cement the WCC name as the epitome of cool.