If Hollinger is the levelheaded architect of Arch, the actor is the dreamer who’s drawn to the creative freedom the company provides. Hollinger says he hopes every bike Arch builds will feel like the gruff-but-docile KRGT-1 that first catalyzed his collaboration with Reeves. While Arch sells only one model at the moment, the plan is to offer three within the next five years: an evolution of the mainstay KRGT-1, a small-batch, two-person motorcycle, and a low-production, high-dollar hyper-exotic. Thus far, Arch has produced a pristine handful of bikes, which have found homes in America, Australia, Malaysia, and Russia, and volume will stay low on purpose, with a maximum of 50 to 100 motorcycles made each year. Adjacent to the factory is the warehouse, where hundreds of brackets, casings, and other odd parts are laid out on ceiling-high shelves, each labeled with unbelievably meticulous sticky notes by Hollinger. Off the main showroom, which is stocked with sample KRGT-1s, is a mini factory, complete with CAD computer stations, CNC machines that mill small, precision parts from aluminum blocks, and a bone yard of scrapped and forgotten project bikes awaiting new life. The small, six-person shop does all design and assembly in-house, as well as much of the parts fabrication. The first one was, ‘You know, someday we’re not going to be here, and it would be really great to leave something that matters to us, something we love.’” Apparently, a catalog of blockbusters wasn’t quite enough for Reeves, who eventually won Hollinger over, becoming the builder’s creative counterpoint and the financier for the newly formed company. “He was very patient with me,” says Hollinger, “and he said a couple of things that started to turn me. Reeves took it one step further and floated the idea of starting a business, but Hollinger tried to dissuade him, saying it would be the worst thing he could do and that he’d probably lose all of his money. But as the bike took form over the years, Reeves and Hollinger grew close, and Reeves began bugging Hollinger about building more bikes together.
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The belabored build wound up taking four years, continually delayed by the movie star’s busy shoot schedule. County Choprods, hoping the self-taught designer and fabricator could transform his botch job into a beautiful custom cruiser. “I fucked it up,” jokes Reeves, who went to one of Hollinger’s earlier shops, L.A. “I remember having that feeling with Keanu.” In the mid-2000s, Reeves had begun blindly modifying his ’05 Harley-Davidson Dyna without any real purpose or objective. “Sometimes the second you meet somebody, you think, I’m going to be connected to that person,” says Hollinger, who has built some of the most imaginative and eccentric choppers in the world.
Each example of Arch’s KRGT-1 model, pictured here, is individualized to fit a customer’s tastes and style, with creative oversight from Hollinger, who has been building custom motorcycles for the better part of three decades. Arch Motorcycle Company, a bespoke studio he founded with master builder Gard Hollinger in late 2011, produces tailor-made bikes for those with at least $78,000 to spare. He doesn’t lead me onto a movie set, but instead into a motorcycle shop- his motorcycle shop, in fact. I knock on the door of an unmarked red brick industrial building in southwest Los Angeles, and the actor Keanu Reeves answers.
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