It’s ice central in Chicago right now—which makes it the absolute perfect time to contemplate this custom 1973 Wassell Mudlark build that was handcrafted by Chris Tope and his shop, Utopeia Moto Company. After undergoing a thorough transformation, it’s now an ice tracker, fittingly called the Ice Pick.
One of my favorite things about motorcycle history is that there’s seemingly no shortage of random branches off the main tree, all leading to stories you’ve never heard before. The Wassell Mudlark is one of those stories, which evolved as a trials bike built by famed enduro rider and builder John Penton. The story involves a 125cc two-stroke Sachs engine made by KTM in Austria, which unfortunately had a problematic transmission that had a reputation for generating a whole lot of false neutrals.
British firm Wassell got involved somewhere along the way—and pretty soon, as the story goes, Penton had the one trials bike model that didn’t do so well. According to Tope, only around 50 or so of these bikes were documented in the U.S., so they’re pretty rare. He found the stock machine in a shop outside of Dallas, Texas—and bit by bit, turned it into the beautiful custom machine you now see before you.
Of course, a bike from the ‘70s is going to need replacement parts, even if you’re building it into a custom machine. With something this rare, not all the parts were easy to find—so what Tope couldn’t find, he fabricated. Some other things, he wanted to fabricate from the jump. That aluminum tank and one-of-a-kind seat cowl are all welded aluminum, with a gorgeous iridescent paint job by Krossover Customs.
Tope built this bike in his spare time, over the course of slightly more than six months. He doesn’t have a full garage or shop to dedicate to his builds, and instead works out of a trailer. Tope is a builder who was bitten by the moto bug early, grew up riding, and continues to do what he loves when he has time outside his day job as a biologist and compliance monitor with various U.S. energy companies.
The end result, outfitted with studded tires, looks like the perfect machine to take on all the lands of ice and snow. Earlier this year, it appeared at Fuel Cleveland, where this video was shot. It also went on to make what’s reportedly its final show appearance ever at the Glory Daze Motorcycle Show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in September, 2022.
