About 25 years ago Thomas Krens, then the director of the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, came up with the radical idea of dedicating a large area of New York’s Guggenheim Museum to a display of motorcycles. The concept raised eyebrows among the city’s art world elite, but Krens was vindicated when the 114 exhibits attracted as many as 4,000 people a day, making The Art of the Motorcycle the most popular exhibition the museum had staged.
Since then many of the world’s wealthy — from Hollywood A-listers such as Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves to the football star David Beckham and chef Gordon Ramsay — have been bitten by the motorcycling bug. This has led to a burgeoning market for one-off machines. These are crafted by talented bike builders and are as likely to be found decorating a penthouse apartment as plying the roads — each one is unique and expensive, with the most complex builds costing up to £80,000.
Luxury brands such as the jewellery house Bucherer and gentleman’s outfitter Dunhill have also got in on the act — commissioning project bikes as marketing tools. While big events such as the worldwide Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride (gentlemansride.com) and the annual Wheels and Waves festival in Biarritz (wheels-and-waves.com) continue to inspire people to build unique, cool-looking motorcycles — or get the professionals to do it for them.
One of the best-known outfits is Deus Ex Machina, a business set up in Australia in 2006 by Dare Jennings, who had also co-founded the Mambo surfwear brand there in 1984 and sold it 16 years later to a US clothing group for a reported $75 million.
Initially Jennings and his business partner Carby Tuckwell focused on building bespoke motorcycles that reflected the laid-back, nonconformist surfer lifestyle, simultaneously establishing their workshop in Sydney’s Camperdown district as a hip place for like-minded souls to hang out, drink coffee and talk “boards and bikes”.
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From there Deus Ex Machina (“God from the machine”) became both a workshop and a “cultural temple”, expanding its remit to selling merchandise in the form of T-shirts, baseball caps, board shorts and biking kit.
Within a decade of opening the business had grown into a global brand with flagship stores offering custom-built machines in the “bobber”, “tracker”, “café racer” and “street scrambler” styles costing anywhere up to £55,000. They were shipped as far afield as Bali, Milan, Tokyo and New York, enabling Jennings to sell his stake (for further, undisclosed millions) to private investors led by the former Ducati and Bally chief executive Federico Minoli.
Despite becoming a global lifestyle label encompassing publishing, music and “experiences” as well as all forms of clothing and accessories, Deus Ex Machina remains synonymous with creating great-looking custom motorcycles, beloved by bike-loving celebrities such as the movie stars Orlando Bloom (who owns four Deus builds) and Ryan Reynolds (three) and the music legends Billy Joel (four) and Bruce Springsteen (one).
And in Milan today nine quintessential examples of bespoke Deus builds, eight unmodified classics from the 1970s and 1980s and one modern Ducati will go on display at the Deus Ex Machina garage in Milan prior to being offered in a 12-day Catawiki auction starting on March 22 and ending at 7pm UK time on April 2.
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Founded in 2008 by the Dutch comic book fanatic René Schoenmakers and the IT expert Marco Jansen, Catawiki began as an online catalogue resource for collectors of comics, postage stamps, coins and telephone cards.
Auctions were first held on the site in 2011, and it has since grown to offer 75,000 objects a week across more than a dozen categories and is available in 17 languages and 60 markets.
The firm employs about 250 specialists who review each object in their category to curate specific sales — with the Catawiki motorcycle expert being Davide Marelli, a former architect.
Marelli, 51, joined the firm in 2012 after deciding to turn his 20-year hobby of trading and collecting motorcycles into a full-time job. He curated the inaugural Deus Ex Machina auction in 2022, an eight-lot event that raised a total of more than €123,000 (or more than £105,000). Top prices were €24,000 for a 700cc Yamaha built for the 2019 Sardinian Swank Rally, an off-road adventure challenge, and €20,000 for a Honda Dominator trail bike.
This second sale of Deus machines includes a model called Fuoristrada, which Marelli cites as one of his favourites. “It is based on an almost new Fantic Caballero trail bike that the Deus builders have transformed with a simpler fuel tank and metal mudguards to create a really purposeful, retro look,” Marelli says.
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“I’m also very impressed by a bike called Checkmate, which is a 2022 BMW R NineT on which almost every component has been blacked out.”
Other Deus-customised bikes include Vivaldi, a KTM-based flat track racer that is not street legal, and a Yamaha SR500 called Milano Street Tracker that’s designed to be light and agile to cut a swathe through city traffic.
“If someone was to set out to make one of these motorcycles themselves it would probably cost them a quarter of what these examples will sell for,” Marelli explains.
“But what people are willing to pay for is the large amount of time it takes to design and construct the bikes, as well as the expertise that goes into building them.
“Each one is a masterpiece in its own way and, although they are designed to be used and ridden, most will probably end up as showpieces in someone’s office or home.”
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Full details of all the machines on offer will be available at catawiki.com from March 22
