The unlikely rise of Purpose Built Moto and the craftsman behind its one-of-a-kind custom builds
Tom Gilroy’s journey to full-time bike building was more a slow burn than a lightbulb moment, shaped by weekend projects, side hustles and the kind of obsessive tinkering that refuses to remain a hobby. As a kid, he’d trade work on neighbouring farms for the old paddock bikes gathering dust in their sheds. And somewhere between swapping fencing work for ageing ag bikes, and turning a Suzuki GS550 into a personal showpiece, the seed that would one day launch his career was planted.
Now 34, the founder of Purpose Built Moto is producing distinctive two-wheeled customs – including a reworked Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650 that was recently launched at an event at Sydney’s Moto Machine.
“It just sort of happened to me,” Tom says. “I never really made the decision to dive in and do this as a job. I just kept getting jobs off the back of other jobs. And here I am.”
Tom grew up about an hour outside the Gold Coast surrounded by farmland and old machinery. If he wasn’t getting about on a bike, he was usually trying to fix one. By the time he hit his teens, he had close to a dozen bikes in his old man’s shed in varying states of disrepair. He laughs when he recalls the chaos and looks on his dad’s face.
“My dad was always cursing me for taking up all the space,” he says.
These days, life looks a little different. He’s recently married to Poppy, who, he says, has always understood the sometimes-chaotic rhythm that comes with building bikes for a living.
“She’s incredibly supportive of all of it,” he says.
His first roadbike came later, followed by that Suzuki GS550 he still keeps in his office. It was the first bike he rebuilt and modified with any real intention. He started posting photos of his builds on social media and when a local guy who unknowingly passed by each day recognised the timber-lined garage wall from his commute and asked Tom for help with a build, that set Purpose Built Moto in motion. Word got around. The jobs kept landing on his doorstep.
For a while, he ran a double life: high-voltage electrician on the road Monday to Friday, custom builder in the garage whenever he could get home. He spent years travelling to remote job sites, clocking long shifts around high-voltage industrial systems before heading home to strip down a bike.
“I’d get back late Friday and spend all weekend in the shed. It was exhausting, but I loved it,” he says.
As the work rolled in, the parts side of the business grew into a crucial element of his operation. Even now, it helps keep the business stable and the workshop floor creative.
“We design our own lighting, mirrors and accessories – stuff I wanted for my own builds but couldn’t find off the shelf,” Tom says. “Now they’re on bikes all over the world.”
While each custom project gets his full attention, the parts business offers a steadier income stream. It also connects him with riders and builders who might never set foot in his workshop. The work-hobby balance began to tip.
“I was making pretty decent money selling lighting and accessories out of my living room,” Tom says. “Eventually I just thought: If I don’t give this a go now, when will I?”
In 2019, he backed himself and left his day job behind and Purpose Built Moto became Tom’s full-time gig. Today, the workshop is tucked away in Burleigh Heads, where Tom and his small team design and build one-off motorcycles while also running a successful online parts store. The content side of the business keeps them busy, too – from photography and blogs to YouTube, all of which harks back to where it started; sharing progress shots on social media.
“It was never about chasing likes or going viral,” he says. “It was just a way to share what I was working on – and people responded to that.”
But it’s the parts catalogue that helps everything else tick along. “It means the bike I go and work on today doesn’t have to keep the lights on tomorrow,” Tom explains. “That gives us space to be more creative.”
Tom has deliberately resisted boxing himself in, knowing that both commercial and creative longevity depends on diversity. From parts and accessories to full custom builds, content creation to mechanical problem-solving, every facet of Purpose Built Moto feeds the next.
“I try not to put myself in a corner and I think in the end that will make us sustainable and that will make us last,” he says.
That resilience comes from a mix of commerce, craft and creative risk – and that diversity, Tom says, is what will keep Purpose Built Moto viable.
“If you look at what we do; we are not a chopper shop, we are not a cafe racer garage, we are not a dirtbike builder, we are not a motocross store, we are a motorcycle store. And if you look at motorcycles as a trend, motorcycles have been a trend since 1900 and we’re in 2025 now and they’re still a trend in one form or another,” he says. “So if you look at yourself as a Honda builder or a racebike guy, maybe in 10 years you’ll be out of business.
“But we are motorcycle guys. Motorcycles are what we do in a broad sense.”
The name Purpose Built Moto came about from a list of notes on Tom’s phone. But the logo was a more deliberate choice. A self-confessed maths nerd, Tom landed on the Greek delta symbol – used in equations to represent change – as a visual metaphor for what he wanted his bikes to stand for.
“It represents something that’s always evolving,” he says. “And that just felt right.”
But creativity doesn’t mean compromise. For Tom, function matters just as much as form. “You can put our bikes in a show and take home a trophy,” he says. “But you can also ride them away. They’re built to ride.”
The Super Meteor 650 he unveiled at the Sydney launch event is a case in point. Commissioned directly by the manufacturer, the build took inspiration from Royal Enfield’s 1940s and 50s models and pushed the donor bike well beyond its factory roots. Tom replaced the stock front end with a one-off girder-style fork, designed and fabricated in-house. The rear end was converted to a monoshock set-up using a custom Nitron unit, disguised to give the illusion of a hardtail frame.
One of the most striking engineering solutions was eliminating the bulky oil cooler. Tom modified the frame’s front down tubes to function as integrated oil tanks, complete with hand-crafted cooling fins.
The petrol tank was shaped in-house by team member Cody, while a reverse-pull front brake lever and a rarely seen hand shifter system were added to give the riding experience a raw, vintage edge. A slim cherry-red leather seat and vintage-style Firestone tyres tied the look together.
“Everything on that motorcycle works differently,” Tom points out, “but it also works. And I can ride it.”
He speaks casually about cutting frames, fabricating forks and reshaping the fundamentals of a machine. But there’s deep attention behind it. With a keen eye for geometry, he’s always watching for the knock-on effects of even the smallest change. And when he doesn’t know something, he asks.
“I’m not an island in this,” he says. “I’ve got mates nearby who are some of the best suspension guys in the world. I learn from them all the time.”
That blend of humility and curiosity has shaped Tom’s reputation as much as his work. These days, most of his clients give him near-total creative control. They might bring a base bike or an idea, but they trust Tom and his team to do the rest.
“I used to have people watching over my shoulder every step of the way,” he says. “Now they tell me, ‘I love this bike you did, and this one. If you can make me something along those lines, go for it’.”
That trust hasn’t come easily. He earned it as he ticked off more and more builds. And it’s what stops him from ever repeating one, even when he knows he could.
“I could make heaps more money if I just made production-run bikes,” he admits. “But if a guy comes to me for a unique motorcycle, and I sell 10 more just like it, that undermines what I built for him.”
Instead, each bike reflects the person who’ll ride it. Some are loud and aggressive. Others are pared-back and minimal. Many carry history: a family bike that’s been found, reclaimed and revived for the next generation.
“What you love, I may hate – or what you love, everyone else might think is whack,” Tom says. “And that’s not for me to say that what you like is wrong or right, but we build ours individually. I don’t really care if anyone likes them, as long as the guy who I built it for likes them. That’s the only thing that’s important to me.”
Ask Tom what he’s proudest of and he won’t name a bike or a part. Instead, he talks about those moments – when the handover becomes something more than just a key exchange.
“Sometimes that story is ‘my great-grandfather owned this motorcycle. He had a crash and hurt his leg. The bike got sold. I ended up finding that bike again and now I’m bringing it to you to be custom built. And then it’ll be in my family and I’ll give it to my son’,” he explains. “And the dad is like 90 years old, sitting on his walker in the driveway in tears because he hasn’t seen this bike run in 30 years. That sort of stuff is so special.”
These are the moments that matter to Tom – the ones where his work becomes part of someone else’s legacy. A bike that was almost forgotten, revived and reimagined. A story continued.
“We’re part of their story now,” he says. “And I feel like it shouldn’t be taken for granted.”
Even now, with international customers and a loyal following, Tom insists he’s still learning. Still building. Still chasing the next creative idea.
“Each of these things is just a step in the journey,” he says. “The story’s not finished yet.”
Up close with Project Delta
Purpose Built Moto’s Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650, reimagined from the ground up
What do you get when a self-taught builder with a maths brain and a love of vintage motorcycles gets a blank cheque from Royal Enfield? You get Project Delta – a one-off custom based on the Super Meteor 650 that hides complex engineering under a deceptively simple silhouette.
Commissioned directly by Royal Enfield Australia, the project offered Tom Gilroy something rare: total creative freedom, without a specific client to design for.
“There’s no one to bounce ideas off in a job like that,” he says. “It’s just you, the brief and the bike. That’s exciting – but it’s also a lot of pressure.”
Tom’s response was both technical and emotional. He looked to Royal Enfield’s post-war models for styling cues, borrowing from the Flying Flea and the original Super Meteor 700, then fusing them with subtle engineering sleight of hand. The girder-style front fork, for instance, was built from scratch. So was the monoshock rear end, designed to look like a rigid frame. The bulky stock oil cooler? Gone. In its place, a pair of hollowed front downtubes that act as oil tanks – complete with cooling fins.
“I didn’t want to build something predictable,” Tom says. “It had to nod to history but feel like something new.”
The velocity stacks were made in Athens during a visit to a Greek metal-spinning workshop. The fuel tank was shaped in-house by Tom’s teammate Cody – one of the first major fabrication jobs he’d ever taken on. The seat is trimmed in cherry red leather and laser-etched with an RE crest. It’s impressive in pictures, gorgeous in the metal and completely and utterly functional.
To see more of Tom’s work, visit purposebuiltmoto.com
