Royal Enfield Continental GT650 – TG's Custom Bike Build

It’s time to add a bit of colour, vibrancy, and personality to TG’s custom café racer thanks to Royal Enfield’s CTG (colour, trim and graphics) department. And doesn’t it look punchy!

Customs of course, should be jazzy. They’re meant to stand out and shock, cause disruption and conversation, but also bring you in to look at the finer details. And can you clock our inspiration? It’s Alexander Calder’s BMW 1975 3.0 CSL Le Mans car – one of the best paint jobs ever.

If you didn’t know, Calder's was the OG Art Car. Inspired by the French auctioneer and racing driver, Hervé Poulain, the American artist grabbed his paint palette, threw globs of primary colours on it and painted them in broad swathes across the paintwork of the BMW 3.0 CSL.

As you can see, the striking and differing Lego block colours fell within the individual elements and added to the illusion of movement. It looked fast when it wasn't moving. Which is the sign of a proper race car. But it wasn’t simply hung up in an art gallery. Oh no. It went to the best motorsport exhibition in the world, instead: Le Mans. Unfortunately, it didn't last the full 24 hours: failing after seven, it had to retire due to a damaged drive shaft. Since then it's been an art piece, living in BMW's museum ever since. More sadly, it was also one of Calder’s last works of art as he died the same year it was unveiled. But its spirit lives on. We wanted to link the world of cars and bikes in this project (as well as racing looks) and Calder's car was our muse.

Getting his iconic livery on our bike wasn't as simple as getting the brushes out, slapping some paint on and hoping for the best. RE’s talented Darline Vogel and Dani Hair have spent hours piling up Photoshop layers making sure the livery worked on all surfaces of the bike.

"To begin with, we didn’t know it’d work at all," Dani says. But fired up (thanks to a mutual love of the 60s, bright colours and big logos) and with Harris’ full fairing to play with as a blank canvas, she got to work doing multiple mood boards and options so we could get a feel for how the concept could work. Then, after months of going back and forth on sketches, mock-ups and renders it was time to try and get it on the actual metal.

Unfortunatley, Photoshop doesn’t account for the materials, light and awkward nooks and crannies that our Continental possesses. So Dani printed out low tac stickers for the design, then thanks to some light water-based lubrication, she manipulated the shapes by hand and masked up gaps to see what worked. When it didn't, she resized and shaped them before trying again. Though a rewarding process, it's not easy, being both time-consuming and enormously intricate. And I forgot to say, symmetry is done by eye. So thank goodness TG wasn't let loose with the masking tape otherwise the whole bike would be on the wonk.

A fantastic addition is the big, flowing ‘CONTINENTAL’ signature. It’s a wonderful, inspired touch; matching the attitude and fun of the bike but also linking back to an era of racing where sponsors were loud and proud. It’s actually the original Royal Enfield Continental script. And that’s not the only bit of archive imagery that we’ve plundered, opting for the iconic Royal Enfield marketing slogan “Royal Enfield - Made like a gun” on the tank. That refers to the dependable, reliable, precision engineering needed for manufacturing rifles and field guns and – hopefully – our custom.

Next stop, the paint booth!