The Honda Dominator like you've never seen it before
Customisers love the Honda Dominator because it’s aching to reveal its true self. Honda’s esteemed adventure motorcycle is highly capable but no traffic stopper. Quite unlike the machine you see here from the stripped-back innovators at Slovenia’s Gas&Retro. Gone is every single Honda-made plastic body panel and most of its creature comforts. In come custom and stock pieces to transform street adventurer into super-fast motocross contender. We like. A lot.
The build had to be a fast one. The Dominator, languishing unloved in a corner of Gas&Retro supremo Žiga Petek’s Ljubljana workshop, had to be ready in 49 days. Petek had decided at the last minute to be part of an upcoming adventure motorcycling festival in Bavaria - and now he needed the perfect ride. Start by stripping off the plastic panels not least because Petek loathes the tendency towards plastic on motorcycles. You may notice that he had to settle for a pair of plastic Acerbis fork protectors. But that’s just about the only compromise.
A fresh fuel tank comes courtesy of a Honda SLR650, because the original was designed to meld with a now-removed fairing. Bespoke rear sub-frame supports a stylish custom seat and features a handy rear luggage rack for your shopping. Well, a little shopping anyway. Electronics box - hand-made naturally - is hidden away beneath the seat. New steel side panels were made in the Gas&Retro workshop, of course. Highsider provided LED signal and tail lights for the Dominator. Huge see-it-from-Mars 9-inch LED headlamp from Strands Lighting Division is mounted in a handmade cage.
Honda Dominator: Steel is real
Key off-road elements include Wilbers shock absorber to the rear and inverted Showa forks to the front. As you’d expect both are fully adjustable depending on conditions. Freshly laced wheels are 18” and wear TKC80 tyres by Continental. You’re going to be well looked after as you make air on the next jump.
Mechanicals remain standard - beyond a new head gasket - not least because there’s quite enough punch from the 44 bhp single-cylinder 644 cc engine, what with all the weight that’s been lost. Take the lightweight mudguards that you might just have noticed, in hand rolled bare aluminium, underlining the form follows function nature of the design on this swift build. Other aesthetics? There was just time to contact regular collaborator Matej Mrzlika at MM Car Paint to provide a smart coat of red paint, while Urban Upelj transformed some cartoonish sketches into vinyl decals for the bike.
Gas&Retro don't publish asking prices for their in-house projects, but we’d expect they’d take your call if you too have a Honda Dominator lurking in a shed, awaiting conversion into something a little more exciting. What you’d be paying for is the sheer engineering panache that Žiga Petek brings to each build at Gas&Retro. Our advice if you like what you see here: take a few thousand out of your essential toys budget and give them a call. We’d love to see the results.
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