We’re not entirely convinced by the name of the bike, but Icon Motorsports has just revealed a really nice custom tribute motorcycle called the Icon 1000 Iron Lung.

The Portland-based company is well known for its motorcycle apparel and every so often builds a bike to underline and showcase a new range of clothing it is launching.

In this case, it’s created the Iron Lung, which is a retro-looking Harley-Davidson Sportster, for the Spring 2014 launch of its ICON 1000 Collections.

ICON 1000 Iron Lung profile

The term Iron Lung to us is a colloquial name for a medical ventilator, used in the distant past, which allows a person to breathe when normal muscle control has been lost through illness or an accident.

That aside, ICON says this particular Sportster sat around for a few years before it decided to do something interesting with it. The design brief was to try and replicate Harley-Davidson endurance and circuit racers from the 1970s and the finished result is this good-looking bike called the Iron Lung.

ICON’s Sportster started life as an 883cc model but was up-rated using a big bore kit to 1200cc, along with a Supertrapp exhaust system and features H-D Wide Glide forks and custom made triple clamps.

ICON 1000 Iron Lung tank

Because the front end of the Iron Lung has been lowered and widened, ICON had to fabricate a sub frame and they used Progressive 970 shocks on the rear and the Iron’s one-off fairing was designed and built in-house.

The wheels are from a H-D Vrod with hand painted details done by Garage 31 and the custom designed seat was made by another Portland company – New Church Moto.

Judging by the film that ICON has made of the Iron Lung it’s definitely not all show and no go and has been ridden hard. Full marks for ICON for admitting that when it first tested the bike, during the initial build, it burst into flames and had to be quickly rebuilt.

https://vimeo.com/78927022

Following that incident, ICON then took the bike to an oval in Southern Oregon and discovered during a fairly rigorous test session that the Iron Lung’s handling was what ICON describes as “questionable”.

However, ICON’s Joe Gustafson added: ”We build them, thrash them and then we build them again all in the pursuit of inspiring and being inspired by the apparel we build.”

We think it’s great that a motorcycle apparel company goes to this sort of lengths in its marketing campaigns to build a custom motorcycle, film it, photograph it, and then use it.

Watch the video above closely for a few sneak peaks of the company’s forthcoming 2014 ICON 1000 gear.


ICON 1000 Iron Lung profile
ICON 1000 Iron Lung tank

 

ICON 1000 Iron Lung exhaust
ICON 1000 Iron Lung tail

 

ICON 1000 Iron Lung #91
ICON 1000 Iron Lung brake

 

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