There's a small shop tucked away in the scenic hills of Campbell, California, that quietly churns out some of the world's trickest custom bikes and aftermarket parts. Gregg's Customs, led by owner Gregg Desjardins, had its hand in the custom sportbike scene even before there was such a notion as a stretched and slammed Hayabusa with a fat rear tire. In the late 1990s Desjardins conjured up a single-sided swingarm arrangement for a few select Yamaha R1s on the East Coast, and since then has evolved into a major player in specialty parts like billet flushmount indicators and fender eliminator kits.
His work can be found on mildly customized bikes across the globe, but recently the bar has been raised beyond turn signals and other ancillary bits. The name of the game these days is specialty swingarms, and Desjardins has elevated his own standards far beyond the earlier days when his custom bent tubing hosted a Ducati hub and tittles. Now the complete swingarm arrangement, known as the GC Side Arm Kit, is made completely in-house and comprises 100 percent of Gregg's Customs parts.
One of Desjardins' business partners, Jon Reed of Sport Chrome, came to him with plans to build a customized `Busa for display at the Laguna Seca MotoGP last year, but the catch was that it was being commissioned by Suzuki. This meant it had to be as sweet as a Sporty Spice Girl smootch, but not loaded down with all the fluff that is so expected when the idea of a custom `Busa is expressed. Instead, Reed and Desjardins chose to take the bike in another direction--one that would sit securely with the race audience it was being unveiled to.
The flash and sizzle of skulls and flames certainly didn't have a place on the plastic, and we found that the `Busa's body is much more bodacious with the clean and simple scheme of the Suzuki/Rockstar/Makita race team than anything else. It was the most suitable scenario, because this bike is all about performance. The sleek appearance is carried through the rear with an obvious nip/tuck courtesy of a GSX-R1000 tail section. Though not an overwhelmingly popular mod to the big Suzuki, it's one of the most dramatic. In order for it to sit properly Desjardin had to pull out some of his custom fabrication tricks, but after one look at his Side Arm Kit it's pretty apparent that he'd be up to the task.