The Confederate X132 Hellcat is the latest creation from the boutique southern motorcycle brand, and continues the Hellcat lineage’s custom-roadster aesthetic. Like any machine produced by Confederate, the real beauty of the new Hellcat comes down to the bike’s detail finishes, which for the X132 includes a motor casing that was built out of two pieces of billet 6061 aircraft grade aluminum.

Officially spec’d with “sufficient” power and torque figures, the  2,163cc v-twin motor on the X132 is more than eye-catching, and should propel you down the road just fine with its estimated 132 peak horsepower and 150 lbs•ft of torque.

With Confederate only expected to make 162 units of the X132 Hellcat, as usual the name of the game is exclusivity. Pricing has jumped from the initial $44,550, and now is $49,500, with another price increase of roughly $5,000 expected after July 4th. Fifteen more photos of the Confederate X132 Hellcat are after the jump for your viewing pleasure.

While the United States has always been a center for custom motorcycle fabrication, a biker renaissance is currently underway on Spanish soil. It shouldn’t surprise us that one of the largest and most rabid places for motorcycling is fostering some of the most beautiful motorcycle masterpieces in the world, this is after all the same country that brought us Dalí, Goya, & Picasso.

Of course you have seen Madrid’s Radical Ducati gracing our pages, but some of our most favorite work comes from the folks over at Sbay. Truly two-wheeled artistry, our love affair first started with the Sbay Flying 1800, but we find ourselves in serious motorcycling lust with the firm’s latest creation: the Sbay Jerry.

It is sad to say, but the Harley-Davidson XR1200X is just about the only thing from the Milwaukee brand that intrigues me. And what kills me the most is that Harley-Davidson could really add something more to its product line up if it just explored the flat-tracker aesthetic in greater detail with its brand. Instead of bringing to market twenty or so variations on the same cruiser shape, Harley-Davidson could really bolster its brand with younger riders if it simply tapped into the street-tracker/scrambler movement that is percolating underneath the “looks like a Power Ranger” street scene.

Wake up Milwaukee, because the emo-teenger, full of high school angst, has matured into the “college is for pussies” hipster scene, which is comprised of an eclectic group of people that have been collectively displaced out of the 1940′s and into the new millennium + 10 years. Building a brand off the 1% rebel perception, I don’t know why its such a hard concept for Harley-Davidson to understand that it can latch onto these new-age bohemians, and create a similar bond with them as it did with the Baby Boomers so many years ago. After all, there is already great symmetry between the two cultures, as both Harley-Davidson and the hipster elite seem forever-fixated on a period in time that is far enough removed from our parents’ generation to be considered cool again.

What the hipsters wouldn’t like of course is the Bottpower BOTT XR-1. A racier and more custom version of the Harley-Davidson XR1200X (The BOTT XR-1 is actually based off a Buell motor), Bottpower has done such a good job making the Buell look Alana Blanchard hot that the Voltron generation will forget all about the reasons their didn’t like the Bar & Shield brand in the first place, and instantly liquidate their pre-IPO Facebook stock in order to make room for Bottpower’s work in their marina-view apartments. Needless to say, I like what’s going on here.

Here at Asphalt & Rubber, we don’t feature too many bikes that subscribe to the “modern-take on the retro look” hipster theory of motorcycling. Maybe it’s because we prefer to go fast rather than look cool, or maybe it’s because we don’t own any form fitting denim pants — honestly, it could go either way on that one. That being said, we know what we like, and more importantly when know what we like when we see it, and that pretty much sums up our thoughts on the 1979 Honda CB650 by Trillion Industries.

Beginning life in the mundane, the Honda CB is a crowd favorite with the retro-turned-hipster crowd for making modern takes on the café racer design aesthetic. Don’t get us wrong, we have seen plenty of café racers that we like, and the market segment enjoys a small but militant following of motorcycle enthusiasts. However, rarely does a Honda CB, no matter how much beauty school it has attended, floor you in your seat. This work by Derek Pauletto however, would be the exception to that statement.

A two-wheeled speeding ticket made in Austria, I’m still bitter that the 2012 KTM 690 Duke isn’t coming to American soil. With all the dressings of a bare-knuckled hooligan machine for the street, the new Duke will surely live up to its heritage of angering elderly women, but a German company has thought up a more refined role for the big-displacement thumper. Adopting the bike into a more superbike trim, German suspension tuners Mototech have created what they call the KTM RC4 690R…and I like it.

We’ve seen KTM Supermono’s before, with perhaps one of the best examples coming from some KTM engineers who built a SuperDuke 690 sport bike on their own time. Don’t let those words discourage you from Mototech’s work though, as the team’s RC4 690R looks like it rolled out of the KTM factory floor this morning. You’ll either love or hate the dual-projector headlight setup, while the tail section remains very true to the lines of the original Duke 690. Everyone will be a fan of the 125kg (275 lbs) quoted weight figure

Former British moto-journalist Jim Lindsay is behind one of the more intriguing motorcycle projects in the UK right now. Working from the list of contacts he’s made covering the motorcycle industry, Lindsay and his crew are building the Enigma 1050, a Triumph Speed Triple-powered custom sport bike.

Collaborating with the minds that bring us Tigcraft, K-Tech Suspension, Promach , and Dymag, the pedigree behind the Engima 1050 is already a promising one, but what intrigues us the most is that the Enigma crew is considering offering the bike as a kit build, in addition to a finished ready-to-ride motorcycle.

One of the nice things about actually going to motorcycle events, instead of phoning it in like many publications seem to do these days, is that you get to see all the treasure trove items that didn’t find their way onto some press release mill for mass consumption. Such is the case of the Pierobon X60R, a custom sportbike that will surely cause some revisions to your Christmas wish list to Santa. We’ve featured Pierobon’s work before, with the Bologna company’s Pierobon F042 causing quite a stir earlier this year.

Like the F042, the Pierobon X60R features an air-cooled Ducati v-twin power plant, and the tuning firm’s own proprietary chassis design. There are plenty of performance parts and carbon fiber to drool over, and the design strikes as one that would have occurred had Ducati made a true air-cooled sportbike. With Pierbon’s extensive experience in the racing scene, we can imagine how much fun an X60R would be on the track, we’ll just have to wait and see if a street model also makes a debut. If you’re a Ducatista and want to stand out from the cappuccino crowd, there are some photos after the jump that might interest you.

We’re big fans of Daniel Simon’s work here at Asphalt & Rubber, especially his Cosmic Motors series. Stocked with some of the most imaginative illustrations of vehicles from an alternate reality, Simon’s two-wheeled pièce de résistance is the Cosmic Motors Detonator motorcycle.

For reasons that probably resemble our work-induced daydreams, Parker Brothers Choppers (PBC), the same firm that brought you the rideable TRON Lightcycle and Batman’s Batpod, has built a functional, albeit unlicensed, version of Simon’s Cosmic Motors Detonator. To the company’s credit though, the build overall seems fairly true to the sketches and renders done by Simon.

After we brought you Barry Munsterteiger’s “Escapism” short, we got an email from Jay LoRossa at Lossa Engineering, sharing with us his company’s “Solus” film, which also takes us back to the original question as to why we ride motorcycles, and begs an answer to our postulation as to why OEM promotional videos are not this well done. Featuring Lossa Engineering’s Yamaha SR500 Café Racer, “Solus” is a movie about a man who finds the only moments of solitude in the busy city occur at night.

Riding alone on the streets of Los Angeles, which would normally be pack and busy during the day, there is that same message here that when you are on a motorcycle, you are alone with yourself, the bike, and the moment. The video is well shot, and tells a story that we think any motorcyclist can relate to about riding. It probably helps as well that Jay’s work is drool-worthy, and his custom SR500 sounds great over Beethoven’s 7th symphony. Watch it after the jump.

Before the name Ariel was synonymous with the Honda-powered Ariel Atom trackday car, the brand was affixed to vehicles of the two-wheeled variety. After producing great bikes like the Ariel Square Four, the now defunct Ariel Motorcycle company was folded into BSA, which in a roundabout fashion gave birth to the current Triumph brand. Building on that vein, we get word that the makers of the Ariel Atom want to get into the two-wheeled biz, and are planning to launch a new Ariel motorcycle by the end of this year.

Though there may not be any exact ties between the current past Ariel marques beyond their names, the idea of another motorcycle maker entering the treacherous and rarely lucrative motorcycle industry fray is nonetheless exciting to us here at A&R; and since we’re big fans of the Ariel Atom car project, we can only just barely contain our excitment on the idea of a similar movement done on two wheels as the one we’ve seen already on four.