Café Racer has two meanings because it can denote a type of a motorcycle, or a person who rides on the bike, the motorcyclist. The two meanings date back to the 1960s in the Rockers group, which was a British Counterculture organization. It can also be referred to as the Ton up Club. The group was predominantly established in Britain but it was common too in Germany, Italy and some other European nations. The Rockers were a defiant group of young counterculture men, who were hungry for speed, and hence they had to derive a way to customize motorbikes to fit the speed they wanted. The distinctive bikes were meant to travel from one transport café to another on the arterial motorways that interlinked British cities and towns. The motive of redesigning a standard motorbike to fit the specifications of a Café Racer was to attain a speed of 11 miles per hour, which was referred to as ‘the ton’. The rockers would take challenges of ‘record-racing’, where a rider would ride from a café to a predetermined place and back to the same café before a song could place to the end on the jukebox. A racer could for example race from Ace Café that is situated on The North Circular Road – NW London to the then Hanger Lane junction (the nowadays-famous Hanger Lane Gyratory System) and back to the Ace Café.
Café Racer has two meanings because it can denote a type of a motorcycle, or a person who rides on the bike, the motorcyclist. The two meanings date back to the 1960s in the Rockers group, which was a British Countercultu...
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