BANDIT9 - MorningCalM SEPTEMBER 2019

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ROUTE INFINITY

Bandit9 might be the most unconventional custom motorcycle brand you’ll ever meet. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it designs highly stylized models that look like the stuff of sci-fi hallucinations.

Daryl Villanueva hates rules. So far he’s done a pretty good job of swerving them — like with Bandit9, the custom motorcycle company he founded in 2014 that scoffs at all the conventions of two-wheeled design. The EVE, one of six models currently available for order, looks too svelte to be functional. Its slim chrome frame is like a glinting weapon, sharpening to an aerodynamic point at its tail. The body has been shaped with just a single piece of steel, and only a small dip along the top gives away where the leather seat resides. Of the original motorcycle it uses as a foundation, just the engine and wheels remain; everything else has been forged anew by hand.

Custom motorcycle building is a big subculture in many places around the world, most notably in the US and Europe. But here, too, Villanueva turned his nose up at expectation — and based Bandit9 in Vietnam. There are more than 45 million motorcycles in Vietnam, a country of 96 million people. Riding a motorbike here is not a hobby or a signifier of counterculture — it’s just a fact of life. “When I had this idea of coming down here and starting my motorcycle company, I thought I would be selling locally,” Villanueva says. “I was dead wrong.”

Villanueva hasn’t made things easy for himself — and there’s a sense that this is exactly how he likes it. Being in Ho Chi Minh City means he doesn’t have the same access to tools and parts as he would in, say, the US. The Bandit9 garage is a team of just four engineers and mechanics. “We ended up having to really do everything on our own,” he says. “Our stuff is really made from scratch.”

Noticing the company’s striking creative vision, some in the motorcycle industry have tried to convince Bandit9 to relocate. “But it’s not everything to me,” says Villanueva. “I like my life. I spent my 20s mostly slaving away, and now I’m trying to — I don’t want to say balance, that’s a little bit cliché — I’m trying to actually flip it. You know, spend more of my time enjoying my life.”

Bandit9’s motorcycles exist in a realm of hedonistic joy, achieved through what the brand has called “sci-fi” design. Current motorcycle trends mainly revolve around callbacks to the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Villanueva is not drawn to that nostalgia. The L-Concept, released in 2018, looks like a metal beast with a clanging heart. Its tank is vaguely reminiscent of a metal pommel horse; instead of flaring left and right, the handlebars curve to mimic the shape of the reins you’d hold when horseback riding.

When asked who his role models are, Villanueva mentions filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve. It makes sense once you look at Bandit9’s designs; they exhibit a kind of transportive magic that’s best described as cinematic. At other times, what looks like a sci-fi reference is in fact mirroring the unexpectedly ordinary. “The EVE was actually from a doorknob,” says Villanueva. “It’s shaped like a bullet right now, but I remember this very specific doorknob. It just tapered.” He loves being inspired by everyday details, but it’s hard to turn off his mind. “It’s a bit of a curse in the sense that I find myself staring at doorknobs. I look like a crazy person.”

Every year, Bandit9 sets a goal. In 2018, it was to have its motorcycles enter museums and galleries, and models were exhibited at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and the M.A.D. Gallery in both Geneva and Dubai. In 2019, the goal is to enter luxury retail spaces.

Villanueva rode his first motorcycle late at night in Ho Chi Minh City when he was 25 years old. At the time, he was working in advertising — an industry he found success in as a creative director, and one he eventually had to escape. “I couldn’t understand why I was doing this anymore,” he says. When asked if there are still days that he questions what he’s doing, he replies, “Every day I wonder. But at least I have an answer.”

Will the answer be the same 10 years later? Twenty years later? “Would I still be interested in it? I hope I am,” he says. “You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of going home.” Where is home for someone who moves around every few years? He can’t say for sure. But home is a point on the map. Bandit9 is riding on an unmarked road. “I guess my definition of failure is going back to my element,” he says.