MEET THE JUDGES: SHINYA KIMURA

Founder of ZERO Shop and Chabott Engineering

Shinya Kimura is one of today’s leading motorcycle designer-builders. His distinctive builds emerge from his 1992-founded “ZERO” shop where he gained a reputation for his bare metal, minimalistic and vintage looking bikes that combine form and function. Kimura’s creations are described perfectly by the Japanese concept of “wabisabi” (austere refinement) and the beauty of the raw materials. Kimura and his crew put their work to the test in vintage races and have won several awards.

In 2006 Kimura launched Chabott Engineering in Azusa, California as an outgrowth of his previous repair shop named Chabo, which means “bantam rooster” in Japanese. This
was Kimura’s “back to basics” statement. With chabott engineering, Kimura continues exploring metal and rubber in new ways—not only building custom motorcycles—but creating functional art by infusing his philosophy and aesthetic values into sculpturally unique and rolling designs.

I believe that the motorcycle itself is art, not just mine but the existence of motorcycle is art. My role is to just extract the artistic quality in motorcycle it already has by redesigning it for the particular rider without trying so hard to make it look like art. (Though I swear I’ve never tried hard to make it look like art.) Since then, two of Kimura’s bikes were used in “Iron Man” (2008), and Kimura continues to build some of the more beautiful and distinct motorcycles on the road.