The airhead programme

Correct is not a matter of taste.

On a custom build, our judgement is the product. On a restoration, our judgement is the enemy. An airhead has a factory specification, a production date, a paint code and a hardware finish schedule, and all of it is documented. Our opinion about whether a particular bracket would look better in black is completely irrelevant.

So we work to the record. Correct plating, cadmium look where cadmium was used, correct fastener head profiles, correct decal placement to the millimetre, correct hose clamps, correct cable routing. The details that ninety nine people will not notice and the one person who matters will notice immediately.

Two honest paths

Concours correct. The motorcycle is returned to the condition it left Berlin in. Complete teardown, every finish renewed, every deviation corrected. This is the right answer for a rare machine, a significant history, or an owner who wants the thing as it was.

Sympathetic preservation. Mechanically rebuilt to as new, cosmetically left alone. Original paint kept with its scars, patina protected rather than erased. A motorcycle only has original paint once, and we will argue hard against removing it.

Which path is right is a conversation about the individual machine, and we will tell you plainly when we think an owner is about to make the expensive mistake of over restoring something that should have been left alone.