The Janus Halcyon 450 Looks Straight Out of The 1920s
The bike features pioneer-era styling, hand-painted decals, and one of the weirdest front ends we’ve seen on a two-wheeler
The Janus Halcyon 450 is a bike that if you saw it riding down the street, you’d almost be sure was a classic bike from the early days of two-wheeled history.
Old it may look, but beneath the hand-crafted panels, fuel tank, and hand-striped badging, it’s a thoroughly modern machine. It also features a bit of a dinosaur in motorcycle design and engineering, in the form of an Earls-type front fork. It’s a system that is more commonplace on motorcycle and sidecar outfits and also featured on some post-war BMW models like the R69 S. Funky suspension continues at tucked away and mounted under the seat.
Like oddball chassis setups? You may also like to read this article covering the most interesting motorcycle front suspension systems.
Powering the bike is a single-single SWM engine based on the XR400 unit. Performance should be adequate but don’t expect to be breaking any speed records, as the air/oil-cooled single-cylinder pumps out an easy-going 30bhp.
Speed though is not this bike’s MO, this bike is designed almost solely to make people do a double-take, as they try and figure out whether this is a genuine classic, some clever restomod blending old and new parts, or a home-built special. It is, though, a very interesting thing to look at, with hand-painted decals and pinstripes really making the model look like a true living dinosaur of the roads.
The base Janus Motorcycles Halcyon 450 costs $14,995 (around £11,400 at today’s rate) although with an extensive list of optional parts and special finishes, the sky really is the limit as to how much the final bike will cost!
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
