Custom Builder Broward Motorsports

With all of the ground-up custom bike builders getting so much attention, it's easy to overlook the companies that specialize in taking stockers straight from the showroom floor and transforming them into wicked customs.

Sure, it's nice to see radical American V-Twins being created from scratch, but some of the sweetest choppers on the road started off as run-of-the-mill metric cruisers. If you don't believe us then take a look at the amazing machines created by Sam Nehme, one of the masterminds at Broward Motorsports. This crew from South Florida turns ordinary Yamaha Road Stars into attention-grabbing choppers that will make even the most hard-core Harley aficionados do a double take.

Nehme, who co-purchased the 30-year-old Florida-based motorcycle dealership two years ago, has a gift for giving the unimposing Road Star and Warrior brother the presence of the whole 101st Airborne division. Not only does he construct these beefed up imports, but he also gives people a custom chopper with the reliability of a factory cruiser.

"The beautiful thing is that we have our own warranty," Nehme states. "We guarantee anything we do for a year, and the factory Yamaha store guarantees the engine, drive-line, and anything that hasn't been tampered with. And you can buy an extended warranty on it."

Broward Motorsports wasn't originally headed into the custom builder direction, but after Nehme got the itch to ride a two-wheeled work of art, the dealership's expansion was inevitable.

"I was interested in having a custom cruiser and I wanted to ride something that I sold. So I pulled a Road Star off the showroom floor, went in back and just started customizing it," explains the Floridian.

It didn't take long for customers to notice Nehme's finished product and start asking for their own renditions. After the number of orders kept escalating, Nehme knew this was going to be a full-time operation and subsequently opened a separate department of Broward Motorsports that's dedicated to building custom bikes.

Customizing a metric is no small task, and Nehme points out that the cruisers from Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki are a lot more difficult to work with than Yamaha's designs that are more open to custom additions. Key to the Road Star's customization success is its air-cooled V-Twin that doesn't require messing around to fit a radiator, and its use of a belt drive instead of a difficult to modify shaft drive. However, pimping out a Yamaha is still much more difficult than beefing up your average Harley.

"It's not as easy as customizing a Harley where you can get the company catalog pick out the parts you want and put it together," Nehme describes. "It's twice as hard to customize a metric bike cause a lot of the stuff you have to fabricate yourself."

Despite the added work, Nehme still won't sell out to the more builder-friendly Harleys. Besides doing a couple of favors for close friends, he feels that his shop isn't set up for the American bikes and has no plans to take on that extra work.

Even though Nehme's bikes go through dramatic transformations, the foundations of the new choppers are still OEM-based. Hidden behind the frame raking, tank stretching, custom paint, and body fabrication is a stock frame and engine. No matter what conversion kits are added or how drastic the changes, at the end of the day, the bikes are still Yamahas at their core.

Nehme enjoys redesigning and modifying the OEM parts to make them stand out, but he doesn't depend solely on his own creativity. "We try to get the customer's input because we don't want to make every bike look the same, and if I design every bike myself, they might look the same," the custom builder reiterates. "Getting the customer's input makes a big difference because everybody has different tastes, and we like it because it makes every bike look different."

Broward's bitchin' bikes can be purchased at a fraction of the cost of some full-on customs, but that doesn't mean they're exactly cheap. Prices vary depending on what customers want done to their bikes, but usually a brand new chopper starts at $20,000 and goes up from there.

Although most of Nehme's business revolves around people buying brand new beefed up rides, they can also bring in their own bikes and have them transformed. In most cases $8-9,000 is a good start in making an ordinary Road Star evolve into a more eye-catching machine. That kind of money will get you a front end, rims, struts, air suspension, and a kit to adapt a 250-series rear tire that includes a rear tire, a new fender, and a modified swingarm. For those who want a little more junk in the trunk, a 280 conversion kit is also available.

Of course, by adding just a little more grease on the pan you can cook a lot more bacon. "With most bikes, you're going to spend a minimum of ten grand to get it to look like a custom bike, with a stretched tank, better wheels, and stuff. It just escalates from there depending on how high you want to go," Nehme describes.

And Nehme proved how high he can go this spring by turning an $11,000 2004 Road Star into an award-winning $55,000 stretched-out chopper. The custom BMS Road Star was part of the Yamaha display show at this year's Daytona Bike Week and took home a first place in the Super Custom Class. After 255 hours of fabrication and three months of day and night building, Nehme is happy with the results of his most expensive and sleekest chopper yet.

Broward Motorsports keeps their schedule full by completely customizing four bikes at a time. They're also continually doing small jobs that might consist of adding air suspension or raking out the frame. And even though Nehme gladly takes on new business, he has to remind customers that building choppers isn't like what they see on TV. Just because you can watch a bike get built in an hour on the Discovery Channel doesn't mean that's how long it takes in the real world. Customers should expect their two-wheeled creation to be completed in about three months.

For more information on Broward Motorsports visit www.browardmotorsport.com.