It’s always interesting to think about who first looked at any particular motorcycle and thought, “nice bike, but why not make it a cafe racer?” The Yamaha Virago has been done many times and as we’ve noted before, it doesn’t come from the factory with any such pretensions, it’s a cruiser. Well, once you look at these two Virago cafe conversions by Greg Hageman of Doc’s Chops, you might think the factory missed the boat by aiming at the wrong target. These look great.

The gold bike is based on the Virago 750, while the white one uses the 920. In both cases the engine is a natural for the cafe racer style, it’s too bad Yamaha didn’t think so when they built them.

Greg has built some gorgeous CX500 cafe racers, too, as was pointed out in a comment on the previous post, but like most custom bikes of this type, these are one off creations by a highly skilled builder. Wouldn’t it be nice if he turned this conversion, which he obviously does very well, into a kit as was done on that CX500? Think of all of the Yamaha Viragos lying around hardly ridden anymore that would get a whole new lease on life. Interesting to think about.

Link: Doc’s Chops

Link: Photos by Erick Runyon of ChopperShotz