Magyar Magic, 1st Hungarian Rod & Custom ShowLike many other people, I’d imagine that the mention of Hungary would conjure up notions of, say, a beef-based goulash, the composer Franz Liszt, or the inventor of the ballpoint pen, Laszlo Biro. Well, it might have done up until the recent European Championship of Custom Bike Building, where the top honours went to Hungary’s Sapka Muvek with his amazing Time Machine (as featured in BSH 278). Seeing the bike in the flesh only served to increase my curiosity about the kinds of customs currently being put together in this land-locked, Eastern European country. I’d been invited over at the behest of Attila Knap, editor of Hungarian magazine Custom Bike, an occupation that must have helped considerably when it came to taking the plunge and staging such an ambitious event as the 1st Hungarian Rod & Custom Show. Attila had succeeded in gathering together over 80 high quality bikes for the show, as well as a similar number of classic American cars, hot rods and customs (the excellent turnout of four-wheelers being partly down to Robert Bekesi, of International American Car Gathering, NAAF). It also managed to become a truly international event, with builders attending from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and even the USA. On arriving at the venue – the SYMA Centre – I wondered if I’d come to the right place. Sure, there were plenty of bikes and cars rolling in, but there were also dozens and dozens of people wandering wearing martial arts whites! It transpired that, no, I hadn’t suddenly and completely lost the plot, it was just that the World Championship of Fu-Jitsu or Kara-Oke, or something like that were taking place in the adjoining hall. With that little matter cleared up, it was time to go and check out the bikes, taking a quick look at the cars along the way (yeah, yeah, I’m a sucker for a set of huge tail fins and a dashboard that looks like a Wurlitzer…). It would be all too easy to think that just because Hungary is a former communist country, and because it’s so far away from those countries more commonly associated with custom bike building, the quality of the bikes on display here would be, well, so-so. Wrong. The domestic machinery was as outstanding and diverse as any of the foreign bikes that’d made it to the show. Hungarian creations ranged from the AMS Snake Bike, a traditional chopper with both oil and petrol tanks having been shaped to realistically represent snakes, through to the Salt Bike, a minimal bobber with a unique front end and a definite feel of salt lakes racing machinery about it, which had been built by Muce Choppers. The international contingent included a handful of bikes from the guys at Krazy Horse Customs (who’d ridden all the way to Hungary from Bury St Edmunds on their trio of rigid chops), German master builders Habermann Performance, fellow Teutonic firm Walz Hardcore, as well as Italy’s AQC. The real surprise, though, was the presence of America’s South Florida Choppers, at the show primarily to celebrate the opening of its new shop just down the road. Hmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with them picking up the Best in Show award… The guys from Muce Choppers were also kept busy for the duration of the show as they carried out a live bike build, one of the added attractions for visitors to enjoy. In the unlikely event that anyone did become bored with watching a chopper coming together before their very eyes, there were frequent spectacular performances by a monster truck and an active low rider car hopping demonstrations to complement the static display of classic yank tin and assorted rods. Okay, it may have meant taking a two-and-a-half hour flight getting my backside over to the other side of Europe for this event (Stop whingeing, you should have ridden there on a rigid like the Krazies – Stu, The Editor), but given the surprising range and quality of the bikes assembled on show, it was well worth the effort. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the 1st Hungarian Rod & Custom Show came pretty damned close to being just as good as any of the other premier continental shows.
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