The AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building has never been about numbers, it has always been about quality, about design and engineering, and about being a showcase for the rising talents and future trends of the custom motorcycle industry.
However, this year's 11th annual AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building is set to establish some truly impressive numbers.
The World Championship program has always sought to find ways to expose the creativity and craftsmanship of the custom motorcycle market to the largest possible audience of existing and potential riders.
Riders who are already sold on customization, riders who can be motivated into engaging with the custom industry as a result of seeing what it has to offer them, and consumers for whom the 'art of the possible' in custom motorcycle terms will be the driver that brings them into the two-wheel world.
By being staged at the world famous INTERMOT exhibition at Cologne, Germany, (the "Cologne Show") this year's AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building is set to show unprecedented numbers of riders just how far the custom motorcycle market has come in the past 25 years.
INTERMOT regularly attracts between 200,000 and 250,000 visitors and is the world's leading international motorcycle industry show in terms of trade and high-mileage consumer visitors.
Being staged in Hall 10, the 'Custom Hall' in which the Cologne Custom Cup (an AMD World Championship program affiliate event) has been staged since 2008, the four day consumer attendance, and dedicated Media and Trade visitor day attendances, are likely to see the highest attendance that the AMD World Championship has ever secured, and in all probability the largest crowd to ever see a custom bike building competition, of any kind, anywhere.
At the time of writing the advance entry list had exceeded expectations for this first staging of the Championship at INTERMOT. With six weeks still to go, 55 builders have entered some 70 bikes, and as befits a truly international competition, these builders are drawn from 20 different countries - which also reinforces INTERMOT's reputation as the "most international" of industry shows.
Exhibitors in the BIG BIKE EUROPE zone so far include Motorcycle Storehouse, Motorsport Aftermarket Group (MAG), James Gaskets and Lauge Jensen.
This will be the 50th anniversary of the "Cologne
Show" and it sees further development of its specialty services for the
industry, with the B2B exhibit zone and Dealer Lounge in the dedicated business
district (between Halls 4 and 5) and a trade visitor/invitee preview day
(Wednesday October 1st) added to the Media Preview day (Tuesday September 30th)
before the four public days from Thursday October 2nd to Sunday October 5th.
The AMD World Championship
will end with the awards ceremony at 5:00 pm
on Sunday October 5th; set-up day is Monday September 29th, and AMD
stages its popular 'International Night' industry reception in association with
sister magazine International dealer News at 18:30
hrs on Wednesday October 1st.
Classes include the acclaimed FreeStyle class from which the
AMD World Champion is traditionally chosen;
the Retro Mod class for pre-1984 platforms; the Modified Harley-Davidson class;
the 'metric' and all-platform Street Performance class which showcases
customisation work where "street-able" performance is the builder's
hallmark; and new for this 11th annual World Championship, we celebrate the
importance of the bikes that paved the way for the SuperBike revolution with
the Cafe Racer Class.