Aussie Ex-Pat Debuts Wild Turbo Harley-Davidson V-Rod At Phuket Bike Week

If you’re willing to overlook his towering, broad Australian build and the fact that he’s tattooed from head to toe, ‘Hutcho’ is a fairly unassuming bloke. In the mid-2000s he toiled away in relative anonymity building his VX Commodore ALTERD - an insanely detailed car for the era packing a slew of custom touches and a giant, 427ci blown LS V8 heart.

Adorned with the same graphics he had inked into his skin (Hutcho also won the Summernats Tattoo comp’ one year) the VX was sold shortly after its debut and Hutcho went searching for an eternal summer in Phuket, Thailand.

Like most Thai residents, he’s found that two wheels get around the nation’s skinny, congested roads much easier than four and as such he’s been building custom choppers and Harleys ever since.

In 2022, he and his team rushed to debut a wild, blacked-out chopper that ended up with a tonne of silverware from Phuket’s famous Bike Week - including Best Custom Bike - and they’ve gone back-to-back in 2023 with a brand new, turbocharged Harley Davidson V-Rod Muscle.

“It’s got airbags, custom paint… all the stuff,” says the notoriously understated Hutcho. “It’s currently making 165hp to the tyre on the run-in tune, so we’ll ride it around for a bit on that before going to bigger injectors and cams and aiming for over 200hp!”

And while he might be half a world away, we can spy a few Aussie performance parts hanging off the boosted bike. The turbo kit strapped to the hotside of the Harley hails from Adelaide’s RAW Performance Industry.

At the recent 2023 Phuket Bike Week, alongside 5000 riders from all over the world and with a claimed 30,000 people in attendance, The Chopper retained it’s crown and was named Best Custom Bike again in 2023, while the brand new V-Rod build also came away with a trophy for the pool room.