Cape Town - While the top local and international extreme athletes are gearing up for the Ultimate X 2016 action sports festival in the GrandWest arena on Saturday 27 February, South Africa's Harley-Davidson dealers (all 11 of them!) are gearing up in quite a different way.
Because this year the Ultimate X festival, sponsored for the first time by Harley-Davidson's Dark Custom division, has issued a challenge to Harley dealerships countrywide to compete for the title of the nation's top custom bike builder in the 'Battle of the Kings'.
And a selection of those machines, each one of them unique in its own right, will be on display at GrandWest on the day.
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The rules are quite simple; each competing dealership has to start with the same basic bike - the new Sportster Iron 883. And after that there are no rules: what they do with the bike is up to them, to create the coolest, most eye-catching custom V-twin possible.
The dealerships have been busy since the beginning of February, sketching, ordering special parts and accessorising the bikes, ready for display at Ultimate X 2016.
And you can vote for your favourite during March and April on the dedicated Custom Kings website; that will be followed by a jury round to decide the national winner, which will be announced after Africa Bike Week in May 2016.
ULTIMATE X
The one-night-only extreme sports festival will include freestyle motocross, trials biking, skateboarding and BMX, in a specially-constructed arena, starting at 6pm with an all-disciplines intro.
That'll be followed by the skateboarding finals, a free-style motocross show, the BMX finals, and the big showdown for the best skateboard trick and the best free-style motocross stunt.
The doors will open at 6pm; tickets are available from Computicket , starting at R100.