At least if a shop builds your pride and joy there's some serious comeback if the twenty-nine inch over springers which they said would look t'riffic and not affect the handling at all, don't and do. Nowadays, just about any chop shop would carefully explain to your fresh, young and enthusiastic face that those springers aren't such a great idea really, particularly not if you intend to tour over the Alps. And furthermore would very likely turn down the job or get you to sign a massive waiver if you insisted you wanted them.

What you're paying for is skill, ability, professional creativity and masses of experience. These guys build custom motorcycles day in, day out: they know what they are doing because any that don't won't last too long, the grapevine soon takes care of that.

Simms has been around a long time, and like many other custom houses they've developed several different and individual custom American-Vs which work so well that they make several versions of them - they in effect go into short run production, designating models and becoming a motorcycle manufacturer, albeit a small one. Some have tried to be bigger players - and we know what's happened to some of those - the successful ones, like Simms, stick with what they do best.

This fantastic black animal of a machine by Simms is a Street Warrior: quite short and stocky, it's built to fly in a straight line and with its huge 131cubic inch motor, the Simms Thug, and performance running gear, I bet it does.

And yes, it's not a typo: 131 cubic inches. Or if you like, the best part of 2200cc.

Insert favourite expletive here.

However, of all the custom motorcycles I shot in Daytona this year, the Street Warrior's Simms Thug motor sounded sweetest and most up together. Too many of the over-bored, look at the size of my one, 'huge-ies' clatter and chuff, fart and need a real handful of revs and slipping clutch to roll on anything like smoothly, only really getting on song on cam … before overheating like a twonk in traffic. The Simms Thug motor, despite its size, sounded right. Emitting an ominous snarl on start-up, it settled into an easy beat almost immediately and loped across the road for its photos with nary a hiccup. Impressed me alright, and that this Street Warrior was clad in fairly restrained black and sat pretty right, I was sold on it.

Virtually all of the engine is down to Simms and where it isn't they've gone to the best. The ignition for example is a Dyna 2000 and they've paired an S&S carb with a Thunderheader 2 into 1 exhaust system. Transmission is taken care of by a Baker 6-speed box, aided by the tried and tested Barnett clutch.

Funnily enough, the primary drive and its cover are actually Harley-Davidson. Didn't know they were still going. But H-D did the electrics too - well, certainly provided the harness anyway. Blimey.

The engine is supported by one of Paughco's finest swingarm softail type frames, which retains both the stock rake and stretch while being extremely low. Even with a fairly well-padded Corbin single seat. The hidden rear suspension utilises Legend Air Ride shocks. Up front, the forks, in a set of Simms yokes, are Stortz USDs, paired with a twelve-spoke Performance Machine (aka PM) 18-inch wheel, which is halted by a PM 6-pot calliper acting on a matching and very trick PM twelve-spoke disc. The rear wheel shod by a proper wide 240 section rear tyre follows the PM twelve-spoke theme too and is set off perfectly by the twelve-spoke pulley, and seemingly gigantic PM rear disc on the right hand side. PM also provided all the hand and foot controls.

The Street Warrior has more than its fair share of neatly sorted moulded bodywork courtesy of the Simms shop, who were responsible for the extended teardrop tank, the oil tank, full front mudguard and very much truncated rear mudguard too. Although the front end speaks of a modern twist on a classic theme, with the black forks, large chrome Headwinds headlamp and full front mudguard, for some bizarre reason the belly pan still works - no, I don't know how either - but it just does.

Neatly frenched into the front of the lower yoke are two TwinSport indicators, a nice touch, as are the black low-rise Flanders handlebars set into a Simms single block riser.

Finally the bottomless deep black paint and very impressive silver/grey tribal/skull motif outlined in red on the tank was laid on by Horst - a lesson in how not going OTT can just ooze class.

Specifications