Custom Motorcycle: Bienville Legacy

What would you do if someone let you create a custom motorcycle without limitations? JT Nesbitt gives you his answer with “The Bienville Legacy”. This two wheeled experiment was financed by Jim Jacoby through his ADMCI Foundation (American Design And Mastercraft Initiative) The program is to encourage innovation by giving master craftspeople carte blanche to create whatever they want while reigniting the legacy of American craftsmanship. 

JT Nesbitt is best known for his collaboration with Confederate Motorcycles as Chief Designer on the Wraith and G2 Hellcat models. He left when Confederate moved from New Orleans to Birmingham, Alabama. He now works in his own Bienville Studios where – his words – “he explores ideas and concepts in an attempt to spark imagination and to externalize his creative impulses…” Jim Jacoby adds “Once you give someone that opportunity to just create with no boundaries, knowing they have a passion for it, only good things can come out of that” 

Pressures for production efficiency, marketability and costs undermine the pursuit of perfect and pure design. Sometimes that’s a necessity as unfettered design can become un-functional. Look at some of the big tire customs as an example. Other times it creates new and amazing features.  Take the long single bow-like frame suspension in red. Suspension damping provided by mountain bike parts, front and rear girders, custom carbon fiber wheels, headlight incorporating the indicators cluster and months of hand-crafting pieces.

After building a total of 3 identical models they now need to sell one to finance the project. Is this the way of the future, a single mans incredible vision or completely unusable? The Bienville Studios.

One other unique piece to this bike is the use of the Motus V4. When Motus designed this motor one of their intentions was for it to be a customer item that other people could use to build motorcycles. This is the first example we are aware of using the V4 outside of the actual Motus motorcycles.