Motorcycles evoke a sense of rebellion and bad-assery, something film and television (and marketing) has been aware of for decades. Want to immediately demonstrate a character is tough and independent? Throw ’em on a bike and voilà. Today’s best known example of this is AMC’s the Walking Dead’s Daryl Dixon and his custom post-(zombie)-apocalyptic ’90’s CB750 Nighthawk. This famous two-wheeler has become increasingly recognizable even to non-moto-enthusiasts, with the bike’s mounted cross-bow leaving little question as to who the scoot belongs to.
In earlier episodes of the Walking Dead Daryl, rode a custom Triumph chopper (that was technically his brother’s bike in the shows universe, hence the Nazi insignia). But the story of how the show’s custom CB scrambob came to be is a pretty cool one. Actor Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl, happens to legitimately be a fan of motorcycles – you may have heard of his show ‘Ride with Norman Reedus‘ – so he commissioned a motorcycle to be made by Virginia-based shop Classified Moto. (I recently featured the shop’s SuperStrada CB-build that won BikeExif’s 2013 Bike of the Year, and Revzilla recently picked on their admittedly ridiculous ATV-wheeled Speed Triple custom.)
Shortly after finishing a custom for Reedus, the Walking Dead’s producers told him they wanted to get another bike for his character and the actor knew just who to call. Because of the show’s filming/production requirements, two identical customs needed to be created for the show, and Classified Moto had a ridiculously short time-frame to finish both bikes, putting the shop under immense pressure as they knew they needed to knock this one (or two rather) out of the park as literally millions of people would be seeing their work.
Fortunately for Classified, the producers actually liked the shop’s established style and allowed them to essentially make a more rugged version of the bike’s Classified has built its reputation upon. Several sketches were drawn up to ensure the bike went in the right direction (as far as producers were concerned) and once the ergonomics had been agreed to, the VA-based one-off CB experts got to work. Because of the time constraints other reputable (or in this case more importantly dependable) shops such as Progressive Suspension and Dime City Cycles were called upon to bang out a few of the two-off parts that were needed for the creation of the twin Nighthawks.
The two motorcycles are perfectly identical to an absurd extent. Every dent and scratch on these bikes looks exactly the same and Betsy Ryland – who cofounded Classified Moto with her husband out of their garage – painted the engines of the machine’s to make them look like they were cobbled together from various existing engines. Applying fake rust (they didn’t have enough time to let it actually rust and couldn’t ensure they’d rust identically), dings in the metal and chips in the paint may sound like a relatively easy task. But when the natural (looking) degrading of these bikes had to be indistinguishable from each other, it becomes a wildly taller order that Betsy happened to nail.
You can ultimately read more about this story on BikeExif as they did an awesome write up about the two bikes and everybody that was involved, but all you really need to know is their creation required an immense number of hard working and talented people to come together and build two incredibly high profile motorcycles in a very short time. Classified’s customers who happened to be having bikes built or customized at the time luckily were understanding and didn’t mind their projects going on hold temporarily in order for the shop to take on this major project.
With millions having seen these bikes on the show, it’s no surprise that dozens of tribute and replica versions of Daryl’s iconic bike(s) have been created. This example is one of, if not the most impressive replica build I’ve seen of Daryl’s bike. Like the two Classified Moto builds, this example started its life as a 1990’s (’91 to be exact) CB750 Nighthawk and demonstrates a solid attention to detail when replicating all the minor touches that make up the original(s).
Staying true to the show’s custom(s), this example sports a crossbow mount (and actual crossbow) that is included in the sale, as well as Norman Reedus’s signature which he autographed on the tank. This build was the result of a father/son project from last year and was featured on display in two booths at the most recent WalkerStalker Convention in Atlanta. This replica example from the hit show supposedly “rides and runs” wonderfully despite its near 20,000 miles on the odo, though based on the attention paid to the cosmetics on this build, I’d be surprised if the engine wasn’t given some care. While this is the epitome of a gimmick or novelty build, it was beautifully executed and does a superb job of replicating the real thing, and at the end of the day, its a fun bike, and that’s what bikes are supposed to be.
You can find this replica of Daryl Dixon’s 1991 Honda CB750 Nighthawk for sale here on Craigslist naturally in Atlanta, Georgia (the region the show is set in) with a price of $13,000.