Austin Business Spotlight

Revival Cycles builds motorcycles the way a gallery builds a reputation — by hand, in Austin

Since 2008, a South Congress shop has been hand-forming aluminum, hand-welding frames, and turning motorcycles into objects good enough for a museum floor — then giving the whole city a world-class show to celebrate it. Here's why Revival Cycles is worth knowing.

By the Austin Gallery editors · June 11, 2026

We started this Austin Business Spotlight to point you toward the real people making real things in this city — the ones who'd rather get their hands dirty than let a machine do all the thinking. It's hard to imagine a better fit than Revival Cycles. We look at a lot of things through a gallery's eye; their motorcycles hold up to it.

Two people, one obsession with how things are made

Revival was founded in Austin in 2008 by Alan Stulberg, who left a tech career to build bikes the way he thought they should be built. He was joined around 2010 by Stefan Hertel, a master mechanical engineer he'd met adventure-riding through town. The split is almost too tidy — one obsessed with how a thing looks, the other with how it works — and it's exactly that tension that shows up in the work. In an industry that leans hard on CNC machines and outsourced parts, Revival deliberately trades convenience for craft: hand-formed aluminum bodywork, hand-welded frames, parts machined in-house.

Motorcycles good enough for a museum

This isn't a metaphor. Revival's J63 — a ground-up reimagining of a 1997 Ducati 900SS with an entirely new in-house frame — spent roughly a year on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum's “Custom Revolution” exhibition in Los Angeles. Their most famous build, the Birdcage, was constructed around an unreleased BMW prototype engine using a frame of 138 hand-cut and hand-welded titanium members — work so striking that BMW Motorrad itself featured it. Add the Henne “Landspeeder” (a tribute to a 1929 land-speed-record racer) and the Hardley (a stripped, reborn Harley Sportster), and you have a body of work covered by Bloomberg, Texas Monthly, Cycle World, and Bike EXIF. They describe what they do as proving “the beauty of purposeful form.” The galleries agree.

They give Austin a world-class show

In 2014 Revival started The Handbuilt Show, and it has become one of the reasons custom-motorcycle culture looks to Austin at all. Held during MotoGP weekend, the 2024 edition marked its tenth year, gathering 150+ hand-built motorcycles (plus cars, hot rods, and an art gallery) and tens of thousands of people across a single weekend. It's a celebration of makers from all over the world that Revival chose to plant — and keep — right here. Kids under 12 get in free; the spirit of the thing is inclusive by design.

What you can actually buy

You don't need a six-figure commission to support them (though they take those too). Revival makes and sells their own beautifully-machined motorcycle parts — turn signals, controls, electrical — plus signature gear, apparel and leather goods, and riding gear, with a retail store on South Congress. If you just want to look, their build gallery is an afternoon well spent.

Why we're telling you this

Because Revival is the kind of Austin business this series exists for: genuinely hand-made, rooted here since 2008, recognized by museums and manufacturers alike, and generous enough to build the whole city a stage. You don't have to ride to respect it. If you do — or you just love seeing something made properly — this is a name worth knowing and a shop worth supporting.

Support Revival Cycles

Visit revivalcycles.com →Follow @revivalcycles

Austin Gallery is not affiliated with, paid by, or sponsored by the businesses we spotlight — this is an independent community feature, written because we think they're worth knowing.