Custom Yamaha XSR700 Street Tracker Looks Rather Terrific With All Its Handmade Bodywork

We love examining the tasty one-offs it has spawned over the years, with the one pictured above hailing from Russell Motorcycles over in Spain. It is a rad street tracker built some time ago, and we honestly love it to bits.

Working with a brand-new Yamaha XSR700 was reportedly a genuine delight for Dani and Eduardo, the talented duo behind Russell. They kicked things off with the customary teardown, deciding to leave the motorcycle’s frame unchanged. The stock fuel tank has also been kept, but it is now partially concealed by an assortment of custom garments. These were all fabricated from scratch with steel as the material of choice.

On the one hand, you’ve got a neat pair of bespoke side covers mounted at the front, yet the real star of the show is located further back. We are, of course, talking about that boxy single-piece tail unit, which was meticulously shaped out of steel to work with the original mounting points. Its sides make their way far ahead to flank the gas tank, giving this XSR a visually cohesive design from front to back.

The tail is topped off with a bespoke saddle, which was made using four individual pieces of EVA foam and looks absolutely superb. Finishing off the rear end is a new tail tidy, and the custom wizardry continues rather gracefully at the front. It does so with a rectangular fairing somewhat reminiscent of a flat tracker’s front number board, placed right where the OEM headlight had once been.

There’s a drilled middle section allowing a bright LED headlight to shine through, all while being virtually invisible once turned off. Lower down, we find the smallest of custom fenders installed using the original brackets, it being the last piece of handmade bodywork we had to mention here. As they were dealing with a new and very capable bike, Russell’s specialists were happy to leave its running gear unchanged.

Still, they did have the wheels painted gold and wrapped in a grippy pair of SportSmart TT tires from Dunlop’s catalog. In the cockpit area, the guys tidied things up by relocating the factory digital dial, which is now placed right in front of the filler cap. They also did away with the mirrors in order to keep clutter at a bare minimum.

As for the engine, it stayed largely unchanged since it had plenty of grunt and was practically new, but Russell Motorcycles did give it a high-end Akrapovic exhaust just to spice things up. An idea they had right from the get-go was to dress this thing up in a Gauloises-inspired livery, which turned out to be a perfect fit for this breathtaking XSR street tracker.