motorcycles builders : CYRIL HUZE

CYRIL HUZE

Innovative, original, visionary, talented and sensitive stylist are words frequently associated with the name Cyril Huze.

But who is the man behind these superb machines?
Here a few answers through his biography and recent interviews.

CYRIL HUZE BACKGROUND :



Cyril Huze has a simple and powerful motto: “I will never design and build a bad motorcycle because somebody could buy it”. Looking at his creations one understands that Cyril is a man out of the ordinary. Each of his bikes provides a new thrilling surprise, and common to them all are elegance, power and a deep sensitivity to the chosen theme.

Cyril Huze was brought up in Paris, France. At 18 he left the family home to become more independent and went on to fund his higher education on his own. By the age of 28, after attending marketing university and working for advertising agencies based in Europe, he opens his own successful company. At a very young age he is chosen to handle the European advertising budgets of multinational companies like Mc Donald's, Volkswagen, 3M, Hertz, Merck, Smith Kline, etc…Cyril is the art director and copy writer of all these campaigns and makes a name by himself by winning many awards and having his work published in hard cover books and exhibited at the museum of advertising.

But what induced a Parisian who was successful in advertising in Europe to give up everything to follow his dream of building custom motorcycles in the US? Passion for everything American. Cyril declares that ”the 50’s and 60’s marked the height of American opulence and I belong to what was, perhaps, the first generation of Europeans to really be exposed to American culture: Rock’n’Roll, Hot Rods …and Harleys. America fired my dreams, and imitating its culture was for me a way of moving beyond my parent’s generation, to forge my own identity. As a teenager I was both rebellious and romantic. I identified with James Dean and his rebellion. He was my idol, provided the escape route that I needed so much. My first week-long visit to the US in 78 was professional but emotionally exhausting. I felt like I was starring in a film in cinemascope. Everything I’d read about in books, heard on radio was there. It was as if I had come back to the country I had lived in during my youth. It was love at first sight.

Life’s too short. So, Cyril decides that he will pursue all his other passions and immigrates to the United States at the end of the 80’s. Very fast he seals his new life by choosing to become a US citizen.

Like most builders, Cyril started to customize his own motorcycles and the ones of his friends more as a hobby than as a profession. All his custom motorcycles went to beat the pros several years in a row both in Daytona and Sturgis. His first client, amazed by the beauty of his creations, gives him a budget of $200,000 to build him 3 motorcycles. Immediately his motorcycles are featured all over the world. In the mid 90’s, the entire motorcycle industry acknowledges him as a master builder with killer designs, original ideas, special attention to details and a unique sense of colors.

Although his motorcycles cost from $80,000 to well over $100,000, Cyril Huze will refuse to build a $100,000 bike for a client who doesn’t understand the art of motorcycle, but may accept to build a $45,000 custom for a custom motorcycle lover who has worked hard to buy his services.

It’s now 18 years that Cyril Huze lives & work in Boca Raton, Florida. In his workshop, he builds custom motorcycles that are never duplicated for another client, a guarantee of value. Since 98, he also designs new parts for his catalog featuring already more than 550 references. For Cyril, work is a joy and creating an obsession. His hobby? Riding one of his sleek customs through the breathtaking landscapes of the American Southwest.

bombshell - sources : http://www.steel-horse-news.com

CYRIL HUZE ACCOLADES :



"In the tradition of Rodin & Renoir, modern maitre Huze combines intellect with esthetic muscle. Collector's of Huze's creations treasure each one, not as museum pieces, but as precision tools to carve the road ahead. Think of him as a master tailor who builds the bike his client will wear"

David Morris
(Robb Report Magazine)


"Cyril's laws of design made him craft one-of-a-kind customs that always inspired the public imagination"

Dave Nichols
(Chief Editor Easyriders Magazine)


"Cyril Huze has been producing some of the most noteworthy, elegant and unforgettable customs on the planet. As much an artist and aesthete as he is a visionary motorcycle builder, Huze always keeps his eyes peeled for art and artifacts that he can use for his bikes."

Mike Seate
(Iron Works Magazine)


"Cyril Huze is the epitome of unique style and design. The custom motorcycle market has evolved like the movie industry, computer design and so many other aspects of our society. Fortunately, the government is still not regulating custom motorcycles under the mat, which allows every style of bike to continue to be conceived. Only the talent limitations of the creative genius hold builders back. That's why we only have a handful of true masters available in this vast land. Cyril is one of those talents who has carved out a niche that is pure and completely unique. In today's market of bike kits and clone customs, there are a few who reach above and beyond what catalogs carry to become true motorized works of art. Cyril builds those components and motorcycles. Each of his customs is a true one of a kind motorcycle that will be admired for generations to come"

K. Randall Ball
("Bandit" Bikernet.com)


“One thing can be said of Cyril Huze customs: they are very different from anything else on the show circuit. And unlike others, they are very rideable even if they look far from it. Taking pictures of his bikes requires more film because of his exceptional attention to the smallest details. Cyril is a true artist, a Master designer and Builder”

Jeff Deasey
(Hot Bike & Street Chopper Magazines)


“Some say my Huze bikes are too pretty to ride, but I’ve got several thousand miles on each to prove them wrong. Like they say, it ain’t worth the feast if you can’t ride the beast. Three Huze customs in my family signals a more than satisfied customer, and with a degree in mechanical engineering I picked Cyril for much more than the good looks of his bikes”

Danny Hughes
(Client Interviewed by VQ/Easyriders Magazine)


“Cyril Huze is the Renaissance Man, with the flair of an artist and the mechanical insight of an engineer. In building a top custom, Huze explores both art and science, balancing form and function into everything he creates. Give him a dream. He will make it come true”

John Schmidt
(American Rider Magazine)


“Cyril Huze builds masterpieces. His name translates to Master Craftsman in any language. His catalog offers an extensive collection of incredible parts”

Paul Garson
(Journalist Easyriders Magazine)


“With enormous talent and an unusual perspective, Cyril Huze creates theme bikes with designs never seen before”

Thimothy Remus
(Journalist, Photographer, Author)


“Cyril, I just wanted to thank you again for my perfect custom. It is a perfect work of art. But the ultimate place to view it from is the seat... It is a dream come true, and I can't explain how impressed I am”

Tim Steltz
(Client, Owner Of “Surreal Huze”)


“Beauty & perfection are typical of Cyril Huze work. Spectators can be only amazed by the quality of his machines. Cyril is now a true legend in the motorcycle world”

Albert Saladini
(TV Reporter, Author)

bombshell - sources : http://www.steel-horse-news.com

CYRIL HUZE INTERVIEW  :




Published by Motorcycle Industry

“Cyril Huze is one lucky guy. His creative styling and inspirational lines motivate us to be more creative. But ultimately there is only one Cyril Huze and we were lucky enough to catch up with him for a look inside the mind of one of the most innovative designers and builders in the motorcycle industry”



Q: At what age did you start customizing in general (anything) and what do you remember about your first custom project?

A: As far as I remember, the first things I customized were my children toys. Especially my miniature cars. With my little friends, we were pushing them on hand made small dirt tracks imagining that we were racing at the "24 hours Le Mans". I remember that I was more fascinated by the design of the cars than by their speed. So, armed with toy paint & brushes I began to customize my small cars. I was doing fancy colors so that everybody knew they were mine. I must have had about a dozen of these small cars Side by side they looked so pretty. I didn't care loosing the race against my friends. My miniature cars were the best looking. It's all what mattered. I had the most beautiful racing team. At 18, I began to smoke cigarettes (we didn't know it was dangerous). So, I customized my ashtray out of a piece of aluminum! All my life, I customized my personal objects. I need to make them mine because I have a very emotional relation with what is surrounding me. I got my first Harley when I just started my 20's. It got stolen before I had a chance to customize it. I remember the terrible frustration. Not only loosing a motorcycle but the dream of customizing it. An object is for me more than an object. The significance of an object is what is important. In one way, objects are talking to me. I always loved to "dress up" objects to make them tell a nice story. It must be in my genes.

Q: Who were your influences in customizing and why?

A: My influences don't come necessarily from people, but more often from everywhere I see art: movies, fashion, architecture, sculptures, beautiful words (they are images) & images (they talk to me), seductive mix of colors, etc. I spend more time looking at architecture & fashion magazines than reading motorcycle magazines. When I see a motorcycle I admire, it's for me a way to know what not to do, because if it has already been done. I don't want to do what has been done beautifully. I am a designer. I don't build the bikes of others. I even refuse to duplicate my own bikes for other clients. Financially, it's perhaps not very sound, but my clients come to me for the words "full custom". I love all form of arts & communication and have an absolute passion for motorcycles. So, nothing makes me happier than to design & fabricate rolling pieces of art for somebody (the client/sponsor) who shares the same passions. A beautiful line or color can move my emotions. Only my emotions influence me. My style is the result of these emotions.

Q: The 60's brought us the California customizing movement in the area of Hot Rods as well as motorcycles. This included legendary automotive customizers such as Dick Dean and Big Daddy Ed Roth among others. How did this time frame of free form customizing affect you and your designs?

A: What is amazing is that I am born in Paris, France and was raised in Europe. Being far away, one could think that I was disconnected from the big American trends. It's quite the opposite. Movies & magazines were my umbilical cord with the USA. They made me dream of living in California, of driving a Hot Rod and doing a Saturday night of cruising on main street. I was not only very receptive and influenced by all big American movements, but obsessed at the idea of doing what a Dick Dean, Von Dutch or Ed Roth were doing. Building a custom car or a motorcycle was not a way of life in France, but it was in America. What they were doing, I admired and I wanted to do the same. Their main influence on me is that they showed me how freedom of expression can lead to creativity.

Q: With fresh new concepts comes trial and error. How do you limit the errors when building something that has never been done before?

A: Since what I am designing and building now has never been done before and will never be done again by myself, all my bikes are prototypes and concept motorcycles. I always know where I want to go with a design because I sketch all my bikes before building them. But I do not know necessarily how to go there. So, yes, there are a lot of trials & errors. Problem is that I cannot limit my errors because it would imply restricting my creativity. It's where a conflict can arise between a custom builder and a client. I am paid to have ideas and produce them. For me, a client is a partner who must encourage me and support my research, both with words and yes, some good money. I carefully choose my clients because I want them to become my best friends during the process of customizing and for a long time after. I know that good clients are as rare as good designers. So, I build few bikes, more motivated by the quality than by the number of my bikes in the street.

Q: You state, "Customizing, there are no rules" as your number one philosophy. The basic rules tell us that metal can only be made to do so much, and paint can only be done in certain steps. Recently you had a bike on display that twisted those basic rules in a knot, 316L. How do you think that 316L will affect the customs that we see in the future based on its extraordinary use of sculptured metal?

A: In life, people have a tendency to feel better when they are in a group, doing the same thing at the same time. When they think, they are like "following the same highway", all driving at the same speed in the same direction. Creating is about to take some highway exits to see if there are new landscapes to discover. Landscapes you cannot see when you are on the highway surrounded by others. It's true that as a material, steel, aluminum or paint seem to have physical limitations. And everybody tries to work inside these perceived limitations. But perhaps nobody tried to push these physical limitations. So, to create, let's not start from the material, but from a potentially good idea and explore the possibility to produce it. You never know, pushed by an idea you can make the impossible possible. Recently I built a custom for a woman. I named the bike "Cheetah". For her bike paint job, I fell in love with a painting of cheetahs realized by an African artist. This painting has special 3d renderings created using a thick brush. Nobody paints a mural with a thick brush because you want the paint job to be smooth like glass. Usually, you use an airbrush. So, during 1 month we tried and experimented everything. We painted the full bike one time, and then sanded all the paint until smooth (loosing 90% of the paint because of the thickness) and cleared on top. We restarted the process a dozen of times, painting over, sanding again, clearing one more time. So, it was 12 full paint jobs in a row for 1 final paint job. But we succeeded with the special effect we wanted. When we paint or sculpt metal, my job is to get the client support and keep my collaborators motivated. When we see somebody trying what we have tried before, it makes all of us very proud and happy. When people tell us that we gave them courage and inspiration, it feeds our courage for our next venture. Yes, when you customize there are no absolute rules. It’s the difficulty and the beauty of my profession.

bravest - sources : http://www.steel-horse-news.com

CYRIL HUZE REFLECTIONS :



 
Published by American Iron Magazine

“If the phenomenon of customization grows so rapidly, it’s because we live in a world with more and more rules for everything we do. It’s also because factory motorcycles look increasingly alike. So, riding being my passion, it’s logically the place in my life that allows me to throw away the rules and be free. Building a bike from the ground up, or customizing one coming off the assembly line is all about freedom. Freedom to dream, to express a personality, to experiment new solutions and to ride exactly what we want. I see the trend toward not only more motorcycles being customized, but toward better customization, and deeper personalization: bikes giving us more pleasure with more muscle, more style, more mileage, more comfort, etc. Whatever we expect and please us when we ride our motorcycles.

The men influencing the motorcycle industry are more than custom builders. They are motorcycle designers. They are sought after and paid for their ideas, even if their financial compensation still comes, most of the time, not from a fee but from the motorcycles they are creating and the custom parts they are selling. And as designers, they exercise a profession that I assimilate to the one of a fashion designer. Every year, fashion designers launch several fashion trends, not one. Each year, professional custom motorcycle builders bring new crops of bikes defining new trends, not one. Some trends go further than others, like now the chopper trend. But some people will never ride a chopper, and will always prefer a street racer, a bobber or a bagger. And inside each trend, there are multiple trends: the new radical chopper trend, the Panhead or Knucklehead chopper trend, the Japanese or Triumph chopper trend, etc. And each trend influences the other. When we exhaust the possibility of what has become a trend, and when the streets are full of bikes looking like the ones we created before everybody, our mission is to experiment and create new styles of bikes. .

If my clients would be the same, all their bikes will look the same. But they are all different. So, none of my bikes are the same. And I have a principle: never duplicate what I have done before. And I refuse every day to do so. I am a designer, so I don’t specialize in a type of bikes. To go from a fat 250 mm rear tire to a skinny one, and from a Chopper to a Softail and back to a Bobber is the only way for me to keep fresh ideas. There is something about each of us that sets us apart. So, each bike in the street should be different. More different than simply a different color paint job. Each biker should show the street what he is made of. If one of my bikes creates a trend or influence the street, I am happy. But it’s not my objective. My job is to explore, to assemble parts that never “met” before, and to do it differently on each motorcycle built in my workshop. It’s the only reason why people should and ask me to work for them. In conclusion, I think the future of custom motorcycles is very bright, with more creativity, deeper personalization, more variety of shapes & colors, better quality of parts. But I don’t see one unique trend dominating the industry. It would be sad. It would be going in the direction of mass production of custom motorcycles, which is another business. Not mine. Every year a bunch of new young talented professionals and garage builders alike bring a lot of new ideas to the business. They shake ideas and bring new ones. They join people like me to warranty that we will not have only one style of motorcycles in our streets. Which is all about: customizing. Anyway, if I could predict the future of custom motorcycles, I still would do something different. By design”

bravest - sources : http://www.steel-horse-news.com

CYRIL HUZE FAVORITES :




Favorite Custom Motorcycle
My next one

Favorite Harley
Panhead

Favorite Cars
Chopped Mercury 49 - Mercedes CL600 Coupe – Escalade EXT

Favorite Words
When what we are is what we want to be, that’s happiness.

Favorite Artist
Michelangelo - Renoir

Favorite Styles
Art Deco - Graffiti

Favorite Inspiration
Rock- Fashion Shows – Museums - Sunset

Favorite Country
Italy (Tuscany)

Favorite Place To Live
A Tropical Beach For 2 in Seychelles Islands (Indian Ocean)

Favorite Vacation
Saint Barts (French West Indies)

Favorite Musicians
Keith Richards- Wyclef Jean- Edith Piaf

Favorite Song
Redemption Song (Bob Marley)
Knockin’ On Heavens Door (Bob Dylan) In Reggae Version (Wyclef Jean)
La Vie En Rose (Edith Piaf)

Best Bands
The Stones- U2- RATM- Coldplay

Best Colors
All Blues- Black

Favorite Food
French- Italian- Moroccan- Thai- Brigitte's



 
sources : http://www.cyrilhuze.com
==========================================================================================



Entrevue V2revolution :

CYRIL HUZE

Pas facile de décrire et de raconter en quelques pages un personnage aussi talentueux et original. Le plus français des constructeurs « custom » américains, Cyril Huze, reflète la créativité et la liberté d'expression. Cyril est Français d'origine, né à Paris. Sa passion pour le monde du custom et le rêve américain ont été déterminants. Sa philosophie du custom représente bien ses priorités : le respect de l’Art et de l’individu en temps que client.

lire l'article complet sur : http://www.v2revolution.com/fr