After years in the wilderness, with few updates to this site and nothing by way of new reader's bikes I was beginning to think that the age of the Kat was over.  Even Streetfighters got to the point that it wasn't featuring any Katanas - so I stopped buying it.  That was until this year, indeed this month - in the space of just a few weeks three new Kats have surfaced and here is the first of them.

I'll let the owner, Felix, explain more:

"I built this bike several years ago to combine the unbeatable looks of the Katana with a more stable frame and add some horses too.

I got the idea of building a bike like this while touring New Zealand in the early nineties on a hotted up wire wheel replica.  This bike was hotted up for racing by the previous owner who then decided that a 851 Duke was probably more built for racing than a 10 year old Katana.  I toured around on it for about six month and absolutely loved the bike, but every now and then it showed that the engine was much faster than the chassis could handle.  Back in Switzerland I started to look around for a Egli or Moko and soon found the red bike shown in one of the photos.  It never was a pretty bike and on top of it had been crashed, so I bought it for a realistic price and stripped it right down.  It took me about two years to turn it into a Katana and get it back on the road but over the years it has been modified several times to get it to what you see in the photos.  All the modifications were either done by myself or with the help of my friend Ruedi, a great engineer who does not know the word 'impossible'. Another great help was Bob of Spondon Engineering who made up some lovely pieces for this bike.

The bike is located in Switzerland and is for sale for €10'000 - or thereabouts including a spare GSX1100E motor and various other bits and pieces. I'm selling the bike as my current project (Moto Martin GSX1100) is nearing completion (June 2008) and space is running out in the garage."

I started this site back in 1996 (if memory serves) and have had the great pleasure of being able to host quite a few outstanding Kats but in all those years I think this is the first one (apart from the Spondons in Streetfighters, which don't count anyway) to have a frame based on something other than the original GSX1100 Katana.  But not only that, it has also been put together beautifully, with care and with amazing attention to detail.  Sir, you have my respect.