Our Story
BORN IN A GARAGE
Tony's Cafe Racers didn't start as a business. It started as an obsession. A leaky BMW R60 in a Port Elizabeth garage, a dog-eared stack of Bike SA magazines, and the unshakeable conviction that old motorcycles deserved better than the scrapyard.
The cafe racer wasn't invented in a boardroom. It was born on the road between London coffee shops in the 1950s — a movement of riders who stripped everything unnecessary off their bikes and rode them as fast as they could. That spirit is what we're chasing.
We operate on a labour-only model because we believe the relationship between a rider and their machine starts before it's built. When you source your own donor bike and track down your own parts, you already know that motorcycle. By the time it rolls out of our shop, it's truly yours.
Where a build requires specialist skills — chrome plating, upholstery, precision machining — we coordinate with trusted local craftsmen. We handle all job specs, quality control and logistics in-house. You deal with us. We handle the rest.
Where a build requires specialist skills - chrome plating, upholstery, precision machining - we coordinate with trusted local craftsmen. We handle all job specs, quality control and logistics in-house. You deal with us. We handle the rest.
Based in Cape Town, we take on builds from across South Africa. If you've got a classic you want transformed, we want to talk.