Building Baron's muscle car-inspired Super Sport custom.

One couldn’t help but notice a small grouping of radically custom Star ships hovering apart from the crowd at last summer’s STAR Days rally in Ogden, Utah.  The attendees, including many of the Star Touring & Riding Association’s 30,000 members, gazed in awe at this assemblage of quick, low and lean machines. These standouts are the work of John Vaughan-Chaldy, a.k.a. Baron, the creative force behind Baron Custom Accessories of Fallbrook, Calif.

Baron Custom Accessories designs and sells a line of custom aftermarket parts for Yamaha’s Road Star, Warrior, Royal Star and V-Star models. Its stellar crew also rolls out several custom bikes every year, showcasing the newest additions to Baron’s extensive product lines, which also cater to Honda, Kawasaki and Harley-Davidson.

Vaughan-Chaldy takes a very proactive approach to the all-important power-to-weight ratio of his customs. He  not only enrolled this particular Road Star in a strict weight-loss program, but also nearly doubled its stock horsepower rating. This back-to-the-lean-mean-and-clean look is dramatically expressed in the Super Sport project bike seen here.

Baron's Yamaha Super Sport custom is a bold example of metric cruisers coming into their own.