The very hatchet.

The one magazine I subscribe to and read faithfully is American Iron. They have great tech articles, do a lot of reviews of American V-Twins (Harley and Indian), and usually feature one or two custom bikes as eye candy.

One such recently caught my eye. Advertised as "Roy’s Red Hot Road King", Beelzebub is a beautiful exemplar of the customizer's art. And while not to my personal taste I can appreciate the effort to conceptualize, design, and build such a machine.

But in reading the article I was struck by the fact that almost no part of the motorcycle is an actual Road King part. It may have started life as a Road King, but in this rendition it sports an aftermarket frame, an aftermarket engine, aftermarket wheels, exhaust, shocks, bars, controls, tank, seat, and so on. About the only original equipment still on the bike is the headlight and rear inner fender.

So calling it a Road King is, in my opinion, tantamount to insisting that the hatchet I hold in my hand is the very same one used by Washington to chop down the cherry tree, except that the head has been replaced twice and the handle four times.