A Chopper is a motorcycle, designed manually from scratch, like just a piece of chassis, or 'Chopped' from an already existing motorcycle.
Chopper kind of motorcycles have been in our world since the late 1930's, and since then there have been two kinds of people related to them- the ones who love riding it, and the ones who love making it.
So we here, are gonna talk about the ones who make it, make the Chopper, it's an ART.
Earlier, a customized motorcycle was said to have got "Bobbed", they used to remove all the non-essential parts, like front fenders, they used to "bob" the rear fenders, and all other accessories, and a "Bobber" was made!
Today, the designers do pretty much the same thing, but its more modernized now.
Another main difference is, most of the time, a Chopper is built right from scratch, from welding a chassis, into a desired look, till designing and building every single element of the motorcycle, whereas a Bobber involved just modifying the whole motorcycle, and removing all the parts that are not required.
Choppers today are like a tremendous piece of art.
How will you recognize a Chopper?
Pretty simple, you'll see a loud roaring, beautiful looking shiny motorcycle, lots of chrome, the front wheel going way ahead to make it go smooth and gas tanks, exhausts, and other parts customized and carved out manually.
You'll find a lot of designing work done on the bike, painted with share art, on the gas tanks, the rear fender, and other parts if necessary.
Basically, a chopper will be stripped off from all the parts that aren't required to make it go, from front brakes to speedometers, and windshields to mirrors, all it has is customized body parts, carved out manually to give it an extensive look.
Chopper building is a big business now, when a chopper is built, it is built it on a theme.
The theme could be anything, from a motorcycle for a fire department, to a Commanche helicopter.
In the 1980s, motorcycle companies like Harley-Davidson began to offer what they called custom bikes. Coupled with an economic recession, this move nearly made chopper culture go extinct. It was only in the mid '90s that custom bike shops began to flourish again, and today the culture is as strong as it ever was.
