Working Class Customs
Working Class Customs
Sucker Punch Sallys & The Affordable Bob-Job
APPEARANCES ASIDE, THE FADED-BLUE 1949 Panhead bobber you see on this page is not, repeat not, a barn-fresh find unearthed in some poor potato farmer’s estate sale. No, just like HarleyDavidson’s new Softail Deluxe, it was built in 2004 and made to look like something from the days of the Harry Truman White House.
It’s the handiwork of an outfit called Sucker Punch Sallys, based in Miamitown, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati. This is an all-up showbike, put together for the Journey Museum’s bob-job retrospective at last year’s Sturgis Rally, but if you like the ethic behind its build, SPS’s production bikes (inset) carry a base price of just $15,995. Now you can have a cool custom for the price of a Toyota Corolla, not an oceanfront condo. Built to ride, too, rather than as a six-figure ratings tool for cable television.
“We ain’t all Hollywood,” says company co-founder Donny Loos, who has been in the car/bike business for 20 years, including a stint with an NHRA Funnycar team. “We
build simple bikes that the working man can afford.”
So while “Sparky” the showbike started out as little more than “tired old crankcases and a title,” each Sucker Punch customer bike is based around a new 1340cc Evolution crate motor ordered straight from Harley-Davidson’s Parts & Accessories catalog. Next comes a proprietary hardtail frame, a Sportster fuel tank mounted “Frisco-style” atop the backbone, a 41mm Wide Glide fork, a vinyl-covered solo seat and a satin-black coat of paint set off by simple, oldschool pinstripes.
Call it Evo meets rockabilly, the kind of bare-knuckle machine SPS co-owner Jeff Cochran constructed once a year in the back of pal Donny’s shop. Why the annual build session?
“Sometimes before I even got it off the table, someone would make an offer I couldn’t refuse,” says Cochran, a custom jeweler before chucking it all to go into partnership with Loos. In business for a year now, SPS (ww.suckerpunch sallys.com; 513/353-2803) has moved 48 bikes through its doors, almost all under $20K. If that’s still too steep, order the “Working Man’s Special,” a $9850 roller made whole with your elbow grease-plus paint, rear fender, carb, wiring loom, primary drive, and brake and oil lines.
“We’re not rich; we don’t have trust funds or know how to play pro basketball. Neither do our customers,” says Cochran. “We build ‘tools’ that can be used every day and kept for years and enjoyed-not $50,000 playthings that get ridden for a few weekends then pushed to the
back of the garage when the weather turns bad. We build ’em to ride ’em.’'
Taking cues from what he calls the “Hot-Rod Nation,” Loos sees SPS’s growing popularity as part of the backlash against overdone customs, twowheeled and four.
“People got tired of cars with fancy paint, billet parts and $200,000 price tags,” he says. “Now they’ve gone nostalgic; at shows, ratrods are taking the trophies over billet queens.”
It’s a genre that’s never gone out of style at the Cochran household.
“I thought everybody sat on their daddy’s knee as he built a bob-job Panhead,” Jeff
jokes. “You don’t read a book or look at pictures to become an old-schooler-either you are or you’re not.”
Potential customers should be warned that Cochran does not like to vary much from his proven script, a “failsafe combination” arrived at after years of trial and error. Options are available-paint, handlebar height, a springer fork, open primary, etc.-just don’t get too carried away.
“No fluff, nothing that gets in the way of it being a working piece of machinery,” he says. “If I don’t like it, I won’t build it. I’ll void it.”
So far, Cochran and Loos’ taste in customs seems to be hitting just the right notes, evidenced by an ever-expanding list of happy customers. In fact, business is so good that SPS has just been issued a Department of Transportation manufacturer’s certificate and plans to sell bikes through select dealerships nationwide.
About the only thing missing
is their own cable television series. “Nah, TV would just complicate things. We’re a fun bunchall that screamin’ and yellin’ would get in the way,” says Cochran with ƒ a big smile.
David Edwards
