A year later, I went through an emotional stage where I missed the show for the first time. I had spent half of my adulthood on television, but it was such a whirlwind that we didn’t have many opportunities to fully appreciate how special our experience was or what a phenomenon the show became. That emotional stage was a period of being able to reflect on our run and realize, Wow, we really did that!
The end of American Chopper signaled a return to a normal life. It was the first time Rachael and I could enjoy normal together, because the show was on the air when we met. Then Hudson came along, and we discovered a new normal! It’s a better normal, for sure.
It has been fourteen years since the day in the shop when I answered that first call from the Pilgrim intern. Sometimes it seems like that was decades ago, while sometimes it feels more like a few weeks ago. Much has changed in my life since then, but one thing that remains is my devotion to choppers, family, and faith.
Paul Jr. Designs is still doing well. Business has slowed, but that’s not a bad thing considering the pace I previously maintained. I’m definitely staying busy, even though without the show’s weekly presence, the demand for high-end custom bikes has decreased. I have changed my business plan to include more custom work. Although the deadlines aren’t what they used to be, I still get hypercreative quickly.
DREAM BUILDS
I’ve heard the popular interview question “Which four people would you like to have dinner with?” Or “Who would be included in your dream golf foursome?” Well, here are four people (in no particular order) for whom I would love to build a custom bike:
Ralph Lauren. It would be awesome to build a bike to match his car collection, especially his $40 million Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic. That would be the flow-iest, craziest, coolest bike anyone would ever see.
U2. They’re a great band, and I’m a big fan. I would draw inspiration from their music and some of the look and feel off their album covers. Then I would integrate those into a really sweet U2 bike. I know that would be a bike that fans would want to see.
Apple. I would give an Apple bike a slick look. The design would be super clean. And, of course, the bike would be electric.
Stan Lee. Anyone who creates Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men, Iron Man, and the Fantastic Four has to be considered “the man.” I would build a series of bikes for all his superheroes, and I would die-cast each one.
I’m PJD’s only employee at the moment and bring in help when needed. Vinnie has always been an independent contractor with his own business, and that keeps him busy. But we have stayed in touch and bump into each other from time to time around Montgomery.
After the show ended, Rachael finally had time to open her boutique, Oliver Anne. We had planned to open her store after I got fired from OCC, but we shifted gears to start PJD. When we signed on to continue the show, we put her store on hold. A month after the boutique opened, Rachael learned she was pregnant. We also own and manage rental properties.
I collect cars now, particularly unrestored cars, some at least one hundred years old. I’m into the rare cars because most from that time period were scrapped to support the war effort. I love learning about the history of automobiles and enjoy hunting for old cars and motorcycles. Recently I even built a car for a client.
I’ve always liked having my freedom, and since the show ended, I have been able to make my own schedule for building bikes and the company while also spending time with Rachael and, of course, Hudson. From my early teens until I was almost forty, I’d estimate that I worked two lifetimes’ worth of hours. Working to that extent was the only way I knew how to work, and it wasn’t healthy. I don’t mind working hard; I’ll put in twenty hours a day for two weeks straight when needed. But I won’t do that as a lifestyle ever again. I’m having too much fun making eggs and eating breakfast with my son every morning.
Hudson was born two-and-a-half years after we stopped filming the show. It isn’t easy to look back and say with certainty what I would have done in a hypothetical situation, but if Hudson had been born while the show was still filming, I know I wouldn’t have been around him as much as I have been. I can’t even imagine that.
I still make appearances for clients and at bike events. I also speak in churches now because I love to talk about my faith.
Life is great. And I think the best is yet to come. I don’t know if that means another show or another baby. Or both! But I don’t think I’m done with television. The way our show ended with big ratings for the second live build-off leads me to believe there is equity there for another show. Part of me asks, Why would you want to do that again? But barely in my forties, I believe I’m in the prime of my creativity.
Many years ago—long before the show—I sensed God placing upon my heart that something big would happen in my life that would be unique, different, and exciting. Frankly, I think American Chopper was a big part of that, but I also feel there is so much more to come.
God is so gracious, and we know that we’ll find fulfillment only when we are where He wants us to be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Although PAUL TEUTUL JR. has always been mechanically inclined, it wasn’t until he was twenty-five that he realized the depth of his creativity. In 1999, he created the iconic logo for Orange County Choppers, a custom motorcycle business he cofounded in upstate New York. With his God-given talent and eye for design, Paul went on to create some of the most recognizable theme choppers in the world, including the Black Widow Bike, the Fire Bike, and the Jet Bike, as well as working with key clients like Intel, NASA, and Gillette.
In 2009, Paul opened his own business, Paul Jr. Designs, and in 2011, PJD won the Cadillac build-off against OCC and the three-way build-off with OCC and Jesse James, which featured a live unveil and results television show. In 2014, PJD assembled teams to create two Azeroth bikes for Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, which appeared in the online game. In 2016, PJD created two bikes for the feature film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
PJD continues to thrive, building custom bikes, cars, and other products for a variety of clients. Paul and his wife, Rachael, and their son, Hudson, live in the small Orange County town of Montgomery, New York.
DAVID THOMAS is the author/writer of twelve books, including New York Times bestsellers Wrestling for My Life with Shawn Michaels, and Foxcatcher, the story that inspired the Oscar-nominated film, with Mark Schultz. He worked for almost three decades in journalism, mostly with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News. David lives near Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife, Sally, and their children, Ashlin and Tyson.
This was my first modern theme bike. The idea for the Spider-Man Bike came to me in 2001 while my father and I were still trying to figure out what OCC would become. We were fairly new at custom bikes and certainly hadn’t made it anywhere of note in the business. The upside was that I could take on a project like this with no preconceived notions of what the bike needed to look like.
The bike drew early resistance from my father and another guy working with us at the time. They didn’t understand where I wanted to go with the design because there was no precedent for that level of creative vision and theme.
I don’t know exactly where the idea for the bike came from. I grew up watching cartoons and always liked Spider-Man. He was an easily recognizable character, but I didn’t tap into anything magical from my youth to come up with the idea. As with most bikes, I started with the tank, then came up with the idea for the webbing on top. And, as often is the case, once I put the design on the tank, the bike seemed to tell me where to go from there.
We were including sissy bars (back support for the passenger) on a lot of bikes at that time, and the sissy bar I came up with—an upside-down V shape—added another level of creativity because its shape lent itself well to the theme.
Custom wheels were not widely used then, but I thought they would look good for this bike. I quickly sketched out a set of solid web wheels and sent
the sketch to a local company to make the wheels. Those were the first web wheels I remember seeing anywhere.
The colors, of course, had to be the Spider-Man costume’s red and blue. And the part that truly connected the bike to Spider-Man came with adding his distinctive black-and-white eyes to the sides of the tank. I could have had Spider-Man himself painted onto the bike, but I chose to go with the eyes on the tank so that instead of the bike having Spider-Man on it, the bike itself would be Spider-Man.
That bike set OCC and me on a path to developing our niche of theme building.
The Black Widow was the Spider-Man Bike 2.0. We were working on the Black Widow when Discovery approached us in early 2003 about making American Chopper into a series. We had started building custom-themed bikes, and as my skill set and confidence grew, I would look at the Spider-Man Bike, then think about how I could take the web theme to the next level.
The Spider-Man Bike was cool, but to me, it had a very young feel because of the blue and bright red colors. I wanted to build out the web theme on a more serious bike, and that’s what the Black Widow became.
The black-and-candy-apple-red paint scheme offered more ominous colors that balanced nicely. Unlike on the Spider-Man Bike, the gas tank was pointed and fully engulfed in webs. I still believe that tank was outstanding, especially with the way the web came up at the front of the tank to give the bike an aggressive lean.
To improve on the Spider-Man Bike, we added webbing to the back fender, which was long and pointed, and exaggerated the webbing on the mesh front fender for a skeletal look. The wheels had three webbed spokes instead of full webbing.
Less noticeable features that subtly pushed the theme included the web stitching in the seat and the black web air cleaner below the tank. The air cleaner was supposed to face the other direction but we turned it around and melted it onto the intake for a skeletal effect.
Even with all that we had going on with that bike, the lines were nice and tight. Anyone who saw the bike then had to take OCC seriously.
And now, fourteen-plus years after we completed the Black Widow, to me the bike looks like it was built only yesterday.
When I look at the Spider-Man and then the Black Widow, I can see that the Black Widow reflects my coming into my own more with the creative aspect. The Spider-Man showed me what I could do in creating unique theme bikes; the Black Widow made me think, I can keep doing this.
From that standpoint, the Black Widow is an extraspecial bike for me.
Of all the bikes we’ve built, the Fire Bike and the 9/11 Memorial Bike are the two most meaningful to me.
The 9/11 Memorial Bike was commissioned through American Chopper in 2011 by Dan Tishman, a member of the 9/11 Memorial board and chairman of Tishman Construction. In the late 1960s, the Tishman Realty and Construction Company built the original World Trade Center towers; then Tishman Construction had been selected to build One World Trade Center. So Dan’s father, John, had built the original World Trade Center, and Dan has led the rebuild.
Dan came to Paul Jr. Designs and asked us to build a bike that represented the World Trade Center. Talk about a mind-blowing request. For a 9/11 project, Dan could have gone anywhere and chosen any medium, but he came to us. Being selected was both a tremendous honor and an awesome responsibility.
As part of the research, we went to Ground Zero when construction of the new WTC was about half completed; we went as far up into the building as we could. Listening to how the events of 9/11 had unfolded and just feeling the impact of being on that ground, I knew the bike had to be extremely special and accurately represent the buildings. We worked off photos, artists’ renderings, and virtual tours of the construction project to integrate the design of the new buildings.
This was one of our first bikes for which we built the frame in-house. It seemed fitting for the project that we build the bike from the ground up. Racing Innovation, which supplies the large majority of our frames, brought a frame jig to our shop and helped us build the frame.
To me, the I-beam steel construction made the buildings work so well aesthetically. To give the bike a construction feel, we chose to go with an aluminum I-beam frame. We employed gusset plates throughout like a steel structure would.
The fuel tank is the first part of the bike that catches the eye because it looks like the stunning state-of-the-art WTC Transportation Hub designed to resemble a phoenix rising from the ashes.
The front wheel is made of hand-poured glass and aluminum, and it represents One World Trade Center, the main building of the new complex. This building replaced what was commonly called the North Tower and is currently the sixth-tallest building in the world. The front end of the bike is built like Three World Trade Center (scheduled for completion in 2018), including its unique facade. On the back, the rear wheel has a solid chrome mirror finish to represent the reflecting pools, and the exhaust was built to look like the new Two World Trade Center, currently under construction.
Iron workers use turnbuckles to level floors as they work their way up the structure, and we incorporated turnbuckles into the handlebars.
A bike project of this magnitude needed to look important, so we worked twenty-four-karat-gold plating into pieces to give the machine a level of richness. The gold plating was used on the 9/11 in the headlight and on the word Memorial beneath it. On the side, we included the words Never Forget and the two fallen towers on the motor mount.
The 9/11 Memorial Bike was one of our most challenging and profoundly important builds because we wanted to represent the entire scope of the World Trade Center project in one chopper. The final product was the most sculpted bike we’ve built.
At the unveiling, I described the bike for the crowd and media gathered outside the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City at that time, called the bike a “work of art” and asked me if he could sit on it! During the ceremony Dan Tishman said that the bike exceeded his expectations. That’s what we hope to hear from our clients!
The bike went on display at the memorial and museum. To raise money for the memorial, we built another bike for a raffle. The design of that second bike was inspired by the 9/11 Memorial Bike, and we included many of the components of the original bike.
When Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast in October 2012, the World Trade Center site flooded. The area in which the bike was being displayed flooded heavily, and the water went up to the bike’s handlebars. The bike suffered extensive damage, but we were able to bring it back to our shop and restore it, keeping as many of the original parts as we could.
In 2010 GEICO became our first client for a bike build at Paul Jr. Designs. A year and a half later, GEICO came back to us and wanted an armed forces tribute bike.
Many people don’t know that GEICO stands for Government Employees Insurance Company and was founded in 1936 to provide automobile insurance for federal employees and their families. GEICO wanted to pay tribute to all branches of the US military—the army, navy, air force, marine corps, and coast guard—and that presented the challenge of giving all five equal treatment.
Our military is powerful, and that’s a theme I wanted to come through in the build.
Choosing the red, white, and blue color scheme was easy. But we went with darker tones, and I thought the bike’s chrome really set off the deep blue. The colors came out amazing.
GEICO originally did not want flags to be part of the bike because if not done properly, flags could have made the bike look clichéd and hokey. We did wind up incorporating part of the flag into the top of the tank. We picked a section that included the flag’s blue field with white stars and a handful of red-and-white stripes below.
Robert “Nub” Collard from Nub Grafix painted a thick red stripe down the middle of the tank’s top, with a blue accent to add another layer to the paint job. On the right side of that stripe—looking at it from the seat—the blue field and white stars were slightly folded over to add yet another dimension. That flag was paint
ed in deeper tones, which gave it a much more mature and serious look.
The challenge coins of each branch stood out to us during the research phase, and we used them to achieve the equal treatment we desired. We designed a gold-plated five-point star for the front wheel with one coin near the center point of each of the five arms. The coins were evenly displayed when the wheel was in motion so that one was not ahead of the others.
The coins created a circular design on the inside part of the wheel, creating a nice effect when the wheel turned. We came up with a similar but more subtle effect for the rear wheel.
One of the bike’s unique characteristics was a chromed exhaust that went forward instead of backward. We mounted the box on the down tube in front of the motor and had five pieces of pipe coming out of each side to represent the five branches. I hadn’t seen a bike that had the exhaust go down and then toward the front and up, and it served the purpose of being out in front of the motor leading the charge like our military does.
We had US Armed Forces painted prominently down the front end and selected words that reflected the values of our military to incorporate into the build in three-dimensional letters. We placed Valor on the back of the bike on a low-lying sissy bar, but did so in a way that it was visible from both in front of and behind the bike. We machined Honor out of aluminum and then chrome plated it and mounted it on each side of the gas tank.
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