American Chopper Sr.vs.Jr. last night featured the culmination of a bike build off tween the two and their companies/cronies. First off, let me explain the whos and whats. Paul Sr. is an ex-alchoholic steelworker, who started building custom bikes on a small scale, and thought he'd let the kid design a few, and the world turned upside down when it came to light that Jr. could do this

right out of the box. Sr. is an abusive idiot who has somehow managed to raise two reasonable, likeable men in sons Mikey and Paulie. Paulie employs Vinnie, and Cody, two favorites from the old days at OCC, while Sr. has much the same crew as always, Mike Amarotti, Jim "JQ" Quinn, master of the CNC maghine, Rick Petko, artist in metal, and Jason Pohl, computer design. What prompted the break between Sr. and Jr. boiled down to how Paulies work and work habits affected the shop and Sr.'s sense of "good business". At the heart of this controversy lay paulie, and his habits of getting to the shop late, looking at things for hours on end, and suggesting changes as they went along, you know, acting like an artist, which was alien to Sr.'s steelfoundry work ethic. Sr.'s opinion was that he could do just fine without Paulie, and that he was largely responsible for the companies success. So Jr. left/was fired, and now the two stand far apart, with the lawsuits and the lawyers involved. Ok. Whew.
The problem with Sr.'s reasoning is that his solution, let the shop design bikes by committee, turned out to be a bad one, when the bikes started looking exactly like they had been designed by a group, and a group who liked to stick crap on the bike,at that. Inevitably, the business took a turn for the worse, and with Paulie's decision to go into business, the Vs. theme came naturally. The first build-off was for Cadillac, and they both chose the same car for design cues. Now, let me preface what I'm about to say here with I don't ride motorcycles. I understood early on that the combination of me and motorbike = dead and bleeding off the side of a bridge. that being said, i feel somewhat able to speak here merely because I've been with the show since the beginning, and I do understand good design.
Senior's design looks like someone took the bike from Death Race 2000, the original, and kept on sticking "really cool" stuff on until they were happy. The hidden nitrous tank, double sided wheels...and the stealth abomination stuck on the end. Just an awkward design.

In the unveil Sr. kept on going on about the "diamond polished motor" and other features that didn't seem very Cadillac. The crowd's reaction was beyond ho hum. Then Paulie came out with his bike and it was polished smoke.

Look at the way the design flows from the front wheel to the rear fender, with it's integrated, real tailights, as opposed to this horror we have here:

That rear end looks like someone thought the engines from one of the spaceships in "Space Balls" looked cool, and stuck it right on.








The two together really make this clear.

Which one would you rather ride? Paulie was the thing that made OCC bikes outstanding, and Mikey was a large part of the success of the show. I think it's safe to assume that without his sons, Sr. would still be making choppers on the side, that look much the same bike to bike. To claim the boys were "nothing" reeks of desperation to save face.