There are plenty of ways to spend £25,000 on a custom motorcycle, but Stuart Poulson was handed a considerably harder brief: that figure had to pay for the modern donor motorcycle as well. His customer, Mr Knight, had approached the Essex-based Poulson Creative Customs about building a Triumph Bobber after seeing the firm’s incredible Dark Night machines. And then he spotted a wide-wheel conversion underway in the workshop and decided he simply had to have one. The resulting Knight Bobber started with a 2021 Triumph Bobber 1200 showing just 1,200 miles on the clock, with the donor and complete transformation all squeezed inside the agreed £25k budget. The workshop even took on the client’s Kawasaki Ninja as part payment, leaving Poulson with the job of deciding exactly where every pound was best spent.
The obvious place to allocate the first slice of the pie was on the stance. Poulson’s own brilliantly designed and engineered 60mm-wider front-end conversion makes room for a pair of British-built 17×5-inch spoked rims, constructed around the original Triumph hubs with bespoke spacers, disc hardware and a closely fitted front mudguard. Both ends wear Pirelli Diablo Rosso IV rubber, creating the sort of visual mass normally associated with far more extreme fat-tyre builds, but without destroying the Bobber’s proportions. Seen head-on, that enormous front tyre dominates the motorcycle; viewed in profile, the familiar Triumph silhouette remains remarkably intact.
With considerably more tyre filling the fork legs, leaving the factory braking hardware untouched wasn’t going to cut it, so Poulson fitted twin 310mm Kanagawa floating discs up front and a matching rotor at the rear. Their unique wave-like design exposes plenty of the beefy spokes behind them, while the original Brembo calipers remain in service and short adjustable levers sharpen up the controls. At the other end, a DID 525VX3 gold-and-black chain runs over black sprockets with drilled fasteners and race-wired rear sprocket hardware. It’s the sort of detailing that rewards getting down on your knees for a closer look, and there’s plenty more of it elsewhere.
The 1200cc parallel twin breathes through the Poulson’s popular airbox-delete kit, opening up the centre of the bike and giving the engine considerably more visual space. Rather than throwing away perfectly good headers, the originals were Cerakoted black and paired with short slash-cut Hitchcox mufflers, delivering a mighty sound from the torquey twin. The result certainly doesn’t look compromised: the black pipework almost disappears against the engine and frame, leaving the finned cylinder head and beautifully uncluttered mechanical package to do the talking.
That same attention is obvious at the rear, where there is virtually nothing hanging from the motorcycle that doesn’t need to be there. Poulson uses their inner-frame brackets for tiny Kellermann Atto 3-in-1 LEDs, while matching Bullet Atto indicators sit up front on custom handlebar mounts. A bespoke short chain guard, radiator guard and the tightly wrapped mudguards continue the clean-up, while Poulson’s laser-etched ignition and clutch covers carry subtle Knight Bobber detailing. None of it feels like a collection of aftermarket parts bolted onto a Triumph; the strength of the workmanship is how convincingly everything appears to have been designed as part of the same motorcycle.
The paintwork could easily have pushed things too far, particularly with the brief calling for something distinctly British, but the execution is simply beautiful and absolutely befitting of the Bobber style. The tank and abbreviated guards are finished in a deep metallic Oak Green, with a Union Jack ghosted into the paint so subtly that its geometry changes with the light rather than screaming across the tank. Fine pinstriping traces the tank’s perimeter, and small Knight Bobber graphics provide the only obvious branding. Against all the black mechanical hardware, the aged brown leather saddle provides the perfect break, with silver eyelets revealing green leather beneath and tying it neatly back into the bodywork: genius.
What impresses most is the consistency of the execution. Look closely at the photographs, and there are no areas where the build seems to run out of ideas or budget: brackets are properly resolved, wiring and lighting have been tucked away, finishes carry from one component to the next, and even the pieces designed primarily to save money look completely intentional. That’s where Poulson Creative deserves serious credit. Building a show-quality motorcycle with an open chequebook is one thing; taking a near-new donor, carrying out a substantial wide-wheel conversion and finishing a bespoke customer bike to this standard while keeping the entire purchase and build to £25,000 requires a very different kind of discipline, and incredible talent.
Mr Knight told Stuart that the finished motorcycle went far beyond what he’d expected, and it’s not difficult to see why. The Knight Bobber has the exaggerated stance he fell for when he saw that other wide-wheel machine in Poulson’s workshop, but the fabrication, component selection and unusually restrained detailing prevent it from becoming a caricature. More importantly, Poulson delivered the whole thing, including a 1,200-mile Triumph Bobber donor, for the price many workshops easily consume on the custom work alone. For £25,000 all-in, this is an exceptional amount of motorcycle, and an even better advertisement for just how much can be achieved when craftsmanship and careful budgeting are given equal billing.
