'One Street' Japan | Chopped VW Beetle & Honda Cub BMX Bikes [With Videos]
Words, Photography & Videography Luke Ray.
[ This article first appeared in Fuel Magazine issue 25. ]
The last day of the 2017 Japan trip! I was to fly out that night but I had one last visit to make. Randomly browsing through social media, I discovered the page of Hajime Kamata of One Street Motorcycles. There were a couple of things about Kamata-san’s feed that peaked my interest; His rusty-look VW ‘Volksrod’ and some cute BMX-style motorised bikes that he was putting together. It was quite a trek to get there, but despite the language barrier, Kamata-san humbly spent half the day with me shooting both subjects. Unfortunately, he didn’t share a great deal of information, but it was enough to get a basic feel of the builds.
According to Kamata-san, the Volkswagen Type-1 has been made in a rat rod, drag racing style. It’s a 1964 body with a roof chop and an extended front end. He does take it drag racing occasionally, where he squeezes a 13 second quarter mile out of the 2013cc flat-4 engine.
The bikes are based around Honda Super Cub engines. The frames are fully fabricated on site at One Street with a goal to achieve a BMX look. The engines start life as stock units and are then tuned to 90cc. The bikes are finished off with off the-shelf parts such as BMX tyres, handlebars and seats. From what I can see, the final products do come up for sale, or I’m sure Kamata-san would be happy to take on a commission if you had something in mind…