Deus ex Machina takes stock motorcycles, looks deep into their eyes and liberates a soul. The idea has its roots in the British café racer culture of the 1950s, but the aesthetic and engineering have moved on a lot since then. Like, there’s another 60 years of time-travelling to pilfer ideas and parts from.

If you can spout every Brough chassis number and the entire racing curriculum of the late Stanley Woods, we’d love to meet you. But if you know zip about motorcycles and want to ask, we’d like to meet you more.

Our custom bikes are broadly locked into the two-wheels-and-a-motor format, but it’ll be your ideas on style, colour and so forth that shape it. How cool is that? By the time it’s built, you’ll have a bunch of stories together. But if you like your gratification out of the microwave, we’ve always got a selection of customs on the floor.

Our low-kilometre “stock” bikes start from around $6000. They’re great as they are, and the best starting point for simmering self-expression. But you enter the realm of ready-to-ride Deus customs with, say, an SR ‘Rocker’ cafe racer from as little as $11,000. Obviously, custom builds cost as much as what goes into them, so that’s up to you. But it won’t become a runaway train. (For, we’d start with a train).

Mikey tells us it’s usually anywhere from two weeks to three months, depending on the complexity of the build. If you’re asking about Mikey’s own bike, it’s been on and off the bench since he was a lad in short trousers.

We’ll take bail of $1000 on a stock bike or low-complexity custom build. But if you’re exercising the full richness of your individuality, it’ll be one-third deposit up-front.

It starts with the type of bike you want; it might be a cafe racer, flat-tracker, bobber or something invented on the spot. (Micky: “Your compatibility ratio is 100 per cent!”) That determines the blank canvas, which will be one of the stock bikes mentioned above, or perhaps a Triumph and Harley-Davidson Sportster for the heavier lifting duties. From there, we look at other bikes, pictures or hallucinations, to build a bike to your needs and style.

We can’t help ourselves. At any given time, there’s usually about half a dozen British, European, American or Japanese classics that we just like to have around for staff drool-venting purposes. Or reluctant sale. Right now, for instance, there’s a ’69 Triumph T120R and a ’72 Norton Commando. Mind the wet floor.

Yes. One of the ready-to-ride Deus customs on our floor could be just right for you. Best way to find out is veni, vidi, sedivi (“I came, I saw, I sat”). But we also have exclusive access to late-model, low-kilometre (and learner-legal) standard Yamaha SR400s, as well as Yamaha TW225 beach-bikes and Kawasaki’s retro W650. Commuters that are already cult classics.

Love to. As long as you want it customised into a Deus bike … that’s what we do. We can’t turn your Vespa into a Harley, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Sure. Come see us in Camperdown, and seek out Mikey. He’s the Greg Evans of motorcycle match-making. Mikey gets you steered with practical advice on the style of bike that best suits you: hillclimbers are great on the sand; bobbers are useless in the kitchen. The only thing Mikey likes more than building bikes is talking about them. It’s less exertive, and he still gets paid.

Yep. If it’s hanging on the rack at the House of Simple Pleasures, you can buy it. And we’ll want to hear all about what you’re bolting it onto.