Be it bobbers, baggers, beamers, or what-have-you’s, there’s a bike for everyone, imbuing the rider with the Steve McQueen or Peter Fonda cool that comes from sitting atop an engine with a can full of gasoline between your knees, hurtling through space as your brain whispers, “Bigger. Faster. Louder.” But there is a motorcycle that rebels against the seductive power of speed and the Botticellian curves of our two-wheeled Freudian steeds: the Rokon Trail-Breaker, the antithesis of all that we’ve decided the essence of a motorcycle should be.
Rokon is the second-oldest continually operating motorcycle company in the U.S., and the bikes they produce today look remarkably like the prototype developed in 1958. For the uninitiated, the Trail-Breaker, Rokon’s original and best-selling model, is a two-wheel-drive mule of a bike.…