Like a tailor who makes fine suits, Joel Hakken hand builds custom bikes. From the lightweight frames with exotic paint jobs to wheels whose weight is measured in ounces, they are functional showpieces. Hakken calls them art on wheels.

The owner of Midwest Bike & Tandem, located in a small shop at the rear of the Courtyard Shops in northeast Ann Arbor, Hakken will be taking four of his custom creations to the 2010 North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Richmond, Va., which starts Friday.

About 60 hand builders from around the country will meet to display their bikes.

The difference between buying a ready-made bike and a hand-built one is like the difference between a tailor-made suit and one off the rack. Handlebar width, crank length and seats are measured to custom fit the rider, Hakken said.

Hakken opened Midwest Bike and Tandem last June after sharing space at the Ride Boutique on North Main Street for a year-and-a-half. While Midwest Bike & Tandem is a full-service bike shop and sells stock and custom bicycles, Hakken’s niche is tandem bikes.

When Hakken and his wife went looking for a tandem bike a few years ago, there was no place in the area that stocked a significant number of tandem bikes, he said. Yet Hakken and his wife, who participate in tandem bike rallies, wanted to buy a performance tandem.

"It’s a great way to exercise and it’s a great way for spouses to have quality time together,” Hakken said. “With two single bikes, you’re never able to go at the same tempo. No matter how hard you try, someone is always working harder.”

Their search led them to Co-Motion Cycles in Eugene, Ore. They bought their bike, which could collapse, while visiting friends in the area, packed it into a carrying case they checked as luggage to take home on the plane and eventually were convinced by the owners of Co-Motion to open a dealership in Ann Arbor.

Hakken has become Co-Motion’s de-facto prototype shop. He takes Co-Motion frames, scours the country for high performance components, such as custom saddles from Fizik, and creates unique single and tandem bikes. 

He took a Co-Motion tandem touring frame that had a lower back bar for a customer tired of having to manage the high bar and fully tricked it out with carbon cranks, saddlebags and even a GPS system.

He will take the bike, which collapses into two carrying cases, to next week’s showing before delivering it to his customers, who plan to use it for touring.

There is a large and growing interest in tandem bikes in the Midwest, Hakken said. The annual Midwest Tandem Rally is the largest in the country, and will come to Ann Arbor in 2011, where they expect to attract 500 tandems, he said.

In addition to Co-Motion, Midwest Bike & Tandem carries Santana along with other brands. “Santana is the tandem king,” Hakken said. “They ride like a Rolls Royce. Co-Motion is more about high performance. They’re more like a Porche.”

These high performance tandems carry high performance price tags and can cost from $3,000 up to $15,000.

While Santana offers a limited number of color options, Co-Motion has more than 90 colors and offers custom painting. Hakken designed a tangerine orange, yellow and white flame motif for one of the bikes he will enter into the show. The goal of that bike is the make it weigh 20 pounds or less, Hakken said. If he’s able to do that, it will be the lightest Co-Motion tandem ever made. 

Typically, tandem bikes weigh 30 pounds with light-weight models coming in at 24 pounds.

“A lot of people think you have to go with (more expensive) carbon to get a super-light bike,” Hakken said. But Co-Motion makes only aluminum bikes, and that’s the challenge of making a performance tandem that weighs 20 pounds, Hakken said.

He will start with the frame - just over six pounds - and add feather light wheels and light-weight brakes. He’ll take the inner chain off the crank, making it a dual chain ring, to shave off weight. The seat posts will be made of carbon fiber.

 “The lighter the bike, the easier it is to climb a hill. You’re not pulling the additional weight,” Hakken said. But it’s about more that just the physics, he said. “It’s the challenge of seeing if we can do it.”