Junkyard Dog & Bombs Away!

Softail Slam

- Alan Cathcart

In these economically straitened times, the Custom cruiser segment of the global motorcycle marketplace has suffered worse than most, and especially in the USA. Sales have slumped, leading many companies to close their doors and depart the scene, while others have suffered a falloff in demand leading in some cases to massive layoffs, as manufacturing the kind of motorcycle so seemingly symptomatic of the bigspending $$$$-driven excess of the naughty Noughties, hits the buffers. For many, it’s simply a question of survival. Look, nobody NEEDS to have a Custom cruiser motorcycle…..!

But one company that’s doing a whole lot better than just getting by is RSD/Roland Sands Design, the eponymous Los Angeles-based design house and custom shop led by the youthful fusion chef of Custom cool [NOTE: see attached profile, and interview]. Sands, 44, has indeed seen his company continue to expand in spite of the recession - a resurgence epitomised by the two bikes I went to the RSD shop in Los Angeles to examine, and ride.

For underpinning RSD’s bespoke Custom operation, which sees a series of trophy winning one-off creations continue to fly off Sands’ conceptual drawing board, before being transformed into metal by the team led by him and long-time cohort, Rodney Aguilar, is a flourishing mail order business which allows customers to buy the trick RSD parts that’ll let them do it their way, and at much reduced cost. Amateur customisers and maybe some pros! - can shop their bike by logging on to HYPERLINK “http://www. rolandsands.com/parts” www. rolandsands.com/parts and after identifying the year and model of any Harley-Davidson, BMW and Triumph motorcycle, just click to see the company’s array of custom parts available for the home workshop.