Sosa Metalworks Recasts A 1940 Indian Scout

Building a motorcycle with handmade parts sorta, kinda completely rules out opening a catalog and ordering a bunch of premade bits and pieces to do the job for you. Cristian Sosa and Sosa Metalworks made “Suavecito” here by hand, a build centered around a 45-inch 1940 Indian Scout motor and transmission. While Sosa’s technical and fabrication skills are obvious in this rolling representation, his rather artistic approach to creating motorcycles may not be. “When I first started building the bike,” Cristian explained, “I was striving for a gentleman’s racer—a bike where design is infused with function and style. The truth is the design was never something that was planned ahead. This is how I like to work—making one piece at a time and allowing the design of the bike to grow from the motor out, and all of it hand-carved and left raw.”

Cristian Sosa feels that when a bike is left raw, it shows the builder’s craftsmanship skills to the best of his abilities. “There is no easy way out when leaving a bike bare like this. Everything has to be done the hard way.” That's a much more personal connection to a bike than bolting on parts from a catalog!