Purists loose the original point when they become too insular, it could be dog breeding or turning bikes into cafe racers. The original ton up boys were individuals and just like today their bike build was a personal thing dictated by money, mechanical skills, choice of bike and cosmetic preference.
We rode cafe racers in the late seventies and early eighties, although we didn't think of them as cafe racers, ace bars were much more common than clip-ons, my GT 250's usually had microns, ace bars and no indicators or mirrors, my mate had an RD 250 with alloy tank, rear-sets and the compulsory microns. We were just trying to make our bikes look more sporty and go a little faster, You could buy off the shelf Re-jetting kits which included K&N's for most of the popular bikes, few of us had rear sets as they were expensive (if you could find them) no internet then. The belief that sports bikes have fairings came later, BMW brought out their faired tourer in 81, and the rest is history.
I think that at the time, if I was asked what a cafe racer was, I would have replied, a tuned up and sporty British bike, we were just trying to make our bikes look cooler and go faster and didn't think about how they were classed.
We rode cafe racers in the late seventies and early eighties, although we didn't think of them as cafe racers, ace bars were much more common than clip-ons, my GT 250's usually had microns, ace bars and no indicators or mirrors, my mate had an RD 250 with alloy tank, rear-sets and the compulsory microns. We were just trying to make our bikes look more sporty and go a little faster, You could buy off the shelf Re-jetting kits which included K&N's for most of the popular bikes, few of us had rear sets as they were expensive (if you could find them) no internet then. The belief that sports bikes have fairings came later, BMW brought out their faired tourer in 81, and the rest is history.
I think that at the time, if I was asked what a cafe racer was, I would have replied, a tuned up and sporty British bike, we were just trying to make our bikes look cooler and go faster and didn't think about how they were classed.
