Over more than three decades, Marcus Walz has built well over a thousand incredible custom motorcycles, and they command a pretty penny! His name was forged in the wild world of Harley-based European customs, before WalzWerk evolved into a genuine motorcycle manufacturer, turning out beautifully engineered BMWs from its Hockenheim headquarters. But there was a problem. A whole new generation had grown up knowing the Walz name, only to discover that putting one of his BMWs in their garage required a fairly serious bank balance. Marcus could have simply shrugged his shoulders and kept building bikes for those who could afford them. Instead, with WalzWerk celebrating its 36th anniversary in 2026, he’s gone looking for a way to put a genuine WalzWerk within reach of a much younger crowd. Enter Royal Enfield, its excellent 650 twin, and an entirely new chapter for the German company.

This is the first result, the WalzWerk RE Cafe Racer, and while the badge on the engine might be new territory, the way Marcus has approached the project certainly isn’t. The new Royal Enfield range will sit alongside WalzWerk’s established BMW series, eventually comprising Cafe Racer, Scrambler and Roadster variants, all built from brand-new Interceptor 650, Continental GT 650 and Bear 650 donor bikes. More importantly, WalzWerk hasn’t simply assembled a catalogue of aftermarket parts.

Marcus and his team have developed their own component programme for the platform, with the parts also available separately for those wanting to build at home. The bike you see here is #02; #01 was the development mule used to finalise the components and conduct the initial testing. Marcus initially capped the First Edition at 36 motorcycles to mark WalzWerk’s 36 years in business, and after an early YouTube preview, every one was quickly spoken for. Production will now continue at 48 RE-series machines per year, each carrying its own numbered plaque.

Underneath #02 is a brand-new Continental GT 650, although one of the first things Marcus did was ditch its fuel tank in favour of the slimmer unit from the Interceptor. Then came one of those typically WalzWerk details that sounds almost ridiculously minor until you look at the finished motorcycle in profile. Marcus wasn’t happy that the factory tank sat slightly too low at the front, breaking the line between tank and frame, so his team designed a CNC-machined eccentric adjuster that bolts into the original mounting point.

Dubbed the Tank Line Correction Kit, rotating the adjuster provides stepless height adjustment until the lower edge of the tank sits where it should. Behind it is WalzWerk’s own Cafe Racer subframe and beautifully trimmed seat, while the tail is stripped of almost everything that normally clutters an Enfield’s backside. The result is one clean line running from the nose of the tank, through the seat and out over the rear wheel, with the black paint, gold hand-laid pinstriping and matching WalzWerk graphics doing the rest.

But the biggest change to the bike’s proportions happens much closer to the ground. The factory 18-inch wheels are gone, replaced by a pair of gold Excel rims measuring 3.00x17in up front and a substantial 4.25x17in at the rear. They’re wrapped in Dunlop Mutants, 120/70 at the pointy end and a chunky 170/70 out back, giving the little 650 considerably more tyre without turning it into one of those customs where rubber width becomes the entire personality.

Fitting the wider rear required a switch to a narrower 520 chain, with WalzWerk adding its own aluminium racing sprocket and matching front. But Marcus wasn’t content to simply squeeze the new wheel into the standard chassis. With the smaller wheels and shortened front end changing the stance, the swingarm has been extended by around 25mm, complete with purpose-designed CNC chain adjusters. It’s a modification you could easily miss, but it helps give the finished bike its long, low proportions rather than leaving the Enfield looking like it’s been squashed around its engine.

The front end has received just as much attention, despite retaining the conventional fork and gaiters that suit the bike so well. The forks are shortened by approximately 50mm and rebuilt with special progressive springs, while new adjuster caps provide external spring preload adjustment. At the rear, the budget factory shocks make way for YSS piggyback units with adjustment for compression, rebound and ride height, giving Marcus another means of fine-tuning the chassis rather than simply chasing a particular stance.

WalzWerk also developed the small front guard and its CNC-machined bracket specifically for the project, with versions available for both 17 and 18-inch wheels. Braking remains sensibly straightforward but gets a useful upgrade through Galfer wave discs and Brembo sintered pads. Even the oil cooler hasn’t escaped attention: the stock item sits too far forward for Marcus’s liking, so an adjustable mounting system pulls it back until it runs parallel with the front frame tubes. The twin horns, normally hung rather conspicuously ahead of the cylinder head, have meanwhile been relocated almost invisibly beneath the tank.

Up top, the transformation into a proper cafe racer continues with low clip-ons and WalzWerk’s small headlight fairing wrapped tightly around an LED lamp. The real piece of hardware here, however, is the new upper triple clamp, CNC-machined from solid aluminium and designed to eliminate much of the visual clutter of the original cockpit. The factory ignition switch has been evicted entirely, with a dedicated bracket relocating it beneath the left-hand throttle body, while a tiny analogue instrument hides behind the tinted screen. Fully adjustable CNC brake and clutch levers finish the controls.

The rearsets seen in these photographs are from Messner Moto, simply because WalzWerk’s own weren’t finished when #02 went in front of the camera; the production components designed by Marcus and his team are manufactured exclusively for them by Wunderkind Custom. It’s a cockpit that looks simple because an awful lot of work has gone into making it so.

Royal Enfield’s 648cc parallel twin remains at the centre of proceedings, and that’s no bad thing. Rather than chase a dyno figure the chassis doesn’t need, WalzWerk has concentrated its efforts on the exhaust and packaging around the engine. The headers are fabricated in-house and, rather than following the awkward route of the standard system, have been shaped to closely trace the frame tubes before sweeping rearwards into a pair of silencers made specially for WalzWerk by Mistral. Better still, they’re Euro 5+ compliant, so this isn’t a set of noisy show-bike pipes that need removing every time an inspector appears.

Buyers can choose brushed stainless steel or the black ceramic finish fitted here, the latter visually disappearing into the frame and leaving the twin silencers to dominate the rear three-quarter view. The blacked-out cases and cylinders contrast nicely against the raw alloy cooling fins, while the gold chain, Excel rims and restrained tank detailing prevent an otherwise very black motorcycle from disappearing into itself.

Perhaps the cleverest part of the whole exercise is that Marcus hasn’t tried to build a bargain-basement version of a WalzWerk BMW. The RE series has its own engineering, its own parts catalogue and soon its own 3D online configurator, allowing customers to assemble a motorcycle much as they already can with the company’s BMW range. A brand-new turnkey RE Cafe Racer starts at €14,900 with a healthy standard specification; #02 adds only the optional 17-inch wheel package and Cafe Racer fairing.

The first 36 might already be gone, but with 48 Royal Enfields joining WalzWerk’s annual production schedule, the company will now build more than 150 motorcycles a year. That’s quite an evolution for a bloke who made his name creating outrageous one-offs, and perhaps an even better way to celebrate 36 years in business: not another six-figure special for the collector’s lounge, but a proper WalzWerk, with all its style and high-end quality, that a new generation can actually get to ride and enjoy!

[ WalzWerk ]