The RetroCross: Honda XL500 Scrambler by PBM.

You know you're getting older when you start to say, “When I was a boy.” Back then, when I was in uniform and eating dried-out sandwiches in the playground, the cool older kids would be pulling wheelies down the back street behind the school on their Honda XLs and XRs. The nostalgia for those days just doesn't die, and here in Australia, no custom workshop has put those epic machines of the '80s back on the map like Purpose Built Moto. Led by Tom Gilroy, the Gold Coast-based team has even come up with a new name for this style of bike: the 'RetroCross' - clean, classic looks packed with modern performance. And it doesn't get any better than this 1981 Honda XL500 Scrambler. Kick it in the guts, it's perfection, soup to nuts. One of the great strengths of PBM is their ability to build any kind of bike in any kind of style, and as a result, they have an enormous and very satisfied customer base. But over recent years, we've seen them refine this type of build, taking old dirt/dual sport machines and bringing them into the modern age. “RetroCross is a term we use to describe the strand of design DNA we've developed across builds like our DT400, XT500, and now the XL500 featured here. The design direction aims to light a fire in the belly of that teenage boy in all of us. Taking the prolific bikes we grew up around, heard our dads talking about, or learnt to ride on, and re-imagining them with a sharp eye on clean aesthetics and modern performance upgrades,” Tom explains.