Super Stars
Super Stars
YAMAHA'S MEGA-CRUISER GETS THE ROYAL TREATMENT FROM TWO CALIFORNIA CUSTOMIZERS
AIMED SQUARELY AT buyers with a penchant for customizing, the 1996 Royal Star 1300 made its debut at Yamaha's annual dealer meeting flanked by the pair of renegades you see here. The first-ever Royal Star customs, they were commissioned by Yamaha to whet dealers' appetites for the scads of bolt-on accessories soon to come.
Let’s look at the mellow, coffee-andcreme creation featured on the left, the handiwork of Jeff Palhegyi. The 28year-old designer from San Diego has worked “on the inside,” doing prototype work for Yamaha since 1988. Two Palhegyi-penned ATV designs have seen production, but this is the first complete motorcycle he’s crafted.
Palhegyi saw the original Royal Star clay mock-up more than two years ago, and thought, “This is a bike I can work with. It has great lines and many independent elements to accentuate.” After studying motorcycles of the ’40s and ’50s and doing design research among riders, Palhegyi was cut loose by Yamaha to come up with his own artistic interpretation. Part of his current job description involves devising bolt-ons for the Royal Star line, but because of time constraints, Palhegyi took a different route.
“I had to modify the original pieces rather than bolting on a bunch of accessories,” hr says. “I tried to make everything look as ‘factory’ as possible.”
He started with the sheetmetal, lengthening the fenders to give his Star its overall shape.
Next, the fuel tank was stretched 2 inches and side covers were meticulously pounded out from steel. To accentuate the long, low look he was shooting for, new shockmount plates were made to get a 1.5inch drop, and a quarter-inch was pulled out of the fork springs. Then he went back and modified the fenders’ openings to match wheel contour.
“Tidbits” filled the rest of Palhegyi’s time before the dealer show. Looking like high-dollar one-offs, the “billet” wheels are really just aluminum covers sandwiching the stock, cast hoops. The wide stock rear lightbar was cut down. A trio of headlights with chromed “eyebrows” maintains the classic theme. Along the same lines, the saddle, complete with chromed railing, was taken right out of the 1940s—it’s actually a reshaped and reupholstered stocker with its base ground down to fit the lengthened tank. Topping off Palhegyi’s Super Star are longer, slashcut exhaust pipes.
Tony Carlini, Santa Ana-based designer of cars and bikes, produced “Rod Star,” the other Yamaha seen here. Like Palhegyi, Carlini has done prototyping, but mainly in the automotive world. Most notably, he worked on Chrysler’s LeBaron convertible and ultraswoopy Viper V-10 sports car. He’s also logged more than 20 years in the two-wheeled realm, rolling out bikes-mainly Harleys-with evocative names like “Social Outcast” and “Hanoi Hooker.” In the ’80s, he even teamed up with Arlen Ness on a Honda cruiser project that didn’t fly.
Now 50 years old, Carlini started riding in the Whizzer/Cushman era of the 1950s and took up his craft as a teenage apprentice in Detroit. Paint brush in hand, Carlini went overboard, imparting his special touch to everything-until a butt-whuppin’ for pinstriping the family washer and dryer brought this exuberance to a halt.
Today, Carlini’s customizing philosophy is the same for Japanese and American iron. “I try to keep things simple and functional,” he says. “I like streamlining bikes to make them look lighter. It’s frame length and geometry first, lowering, and then the gas tank, fenders and, finally, what I find really critical, the headlight.”
On this bike, Carlini crafted a mounting plate and faired-in hood for the headlight that hark back to postwar designs. Matching the meatiness of the front end is an equally gargantuan handlebar, bent from inch-and-aquarter tubing-“It doesn’t look like you’re steering with a coat hanger,” he says. Stock switchgear is utilized thanks to stepped-down bar ends.
The crowning touch is one of
Carlini’s signature flamed paint jobs. The base coat is a candy-apple bluepearl blend accented with fluorescent day-glo flames. Protecting it all are almost two gallons of clear coat-some 25 applications.
Carlini thinks classic, hot-rod styling will continue to recycle itself. “People used this same look on Triumphs and Ariel Square Fours years ago,” he says. “You just lighten ’em up.” Unfortunately, he had just one month to work the aesthetic magic seen here, which is relatively mild by Carlini standards. But he sees real potential in the Royal Star concept; given six months, he says, he’d go wild, cutting, welding and hammering out a much more radical Rod Star.
Somebody please get this man another Yamaha. -Eric Putter
