Steve Iacona Wins $20,000 From Lightning Bolt USA
Steve Iacona, from Iacona Custom Cycles just walked away with $20,000 from the custom motorcycle event you’ve never heard of, the Lightning Bolt USA custom motorcycle challenge.
Taking $20,000 home for a one-day show doesn’t typically happen. At least in our experience. So when we caught wind that Steve was the lucky recipient of the grand prize, we had to dive deeper.
What is the Lightning Bolt USA custom challenge, you ask? Well, it’s a winner-take-all custom motorcycle build-off produced by Dunworth Machines and sponsored by BMW Motorrad, The House of Machines New York and Rev’It! The one-day event took place March 25, 2023. Invitees were hand-selected by motorcycle industry vets to bring their latest and greatest to Manhattan to be judged by a panel of experts from three different categories: Overall Design, judged by Edgar Heinrich, lead designer of BMW Motorrad, overall paint and finish, judged by John the Painter, and overall fabrication and assembly in terms of being structurally sound, Brian Buttera from Florida. It all started when Kevin Dunworth, a motorcycle nut, builder, show producer, and much more. Kevin was hired to produce the Lightning Bolt USA and he invited a group of about 12 builders to compete in a BMW-sponsored custom bike building challenge, about a month ago. “All the pressure was on Kevin to put the show together,” Steve Iacona says. “He wanted 12 builders in the gallery, but only ended up with 10.”
Kevin with the help of his friend and mentor, Bob Kay, developed a judging formula which seems to be the default system that has caught on with all the bigger shows. The formula is to have three judges focusing on specific areas of expertise: fabrication, paint and finish, and overall design. “Those three judging sheets are completely different,” Kevin says. “The struggle is, ‘how do you compare a chopper to a café racer?’” The goal here is to take bias away from individual judges who might lean toward picking a particular genre or style. The judging sheet, which is top secret, allows judges to focus on each individual bike during the judging, not so much the competitive, apples to oranges nature of big bike building competitions. When you have $20,000 on the line, your judging better be legit.
Once the judging commenced, builders and all attendees headed over to The House of Machines New York for the official after-party where the awards were handed out later in the evening.
But of the 10 invitees, there could be only one winner. At 8pm, the announcements were made and top BMW Motorrad brass were in attendance to hand out the large check to one of the lucky 10 participants. When Steve’s name was called he was floored. When asked what he was going to do with the funds, “I’m going to pay tuition,” he says with a chuckle. “I have one in college and one in private school. I’ll also invest a little into my shop with a power hammer. ”
Plans for The Lightning Bolt custom motorcycle challenge in 2024 and beyond are yet to be determined. But if $20,000 is on the line and the judging formula is legitimately fair, which it seems to be, this could be the new benchmark for custom builders around the world.
