Manufacturing Choppers is a tradition at AME.
AME (Automobile-Motorcycle-Engineering) has been producing
Choppers and Chopper parts in Germany Since 1973.

"Captain America": 
 

In the late 60’s a couple of West Coast movie heroes called ""Wyatt" and "Billy", alias Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, lived the American dream from the country of boundless freedom. They probably had no idea what they had started when they built “Captain America & The Billy Bike”. As they rode across America with us watching them on the big screen, a new Chopper and Biker generation was born. The movie “Easy Rider” changed the bike world and gave young people the guts to realize their ideas and start something new. (Like becoming Germanys first builder of Chopper Style motorcycles, to earn the prized TUV certification.)

At the beginning of the seventies things were different, and in Germany, motorcycles were just becoming popular again. Not as cheap transportation, but as a leisure time vehicle. There were sport bikes and tour bikes. Some riders liked the BMW’s, others swore on Italian bikes, the rest drove sport bikes. Only a few bikers were dreaming of Harley-Davidsons like the ones in “Easy Rider”. Back then, Harley-Choppers couldn’t be bought anywhere in Germany.  And if they could, they would never have passed the German vehicle safety authority TÜV. If anybody had even tried to drive such a bike he probably would have been thrown in jail by the German police.

But even so, the “Easy Rider” virus had infected some bikers in Germany. A totally new motorcycle philosophy was born. Driving a chopper was not riding your bike full throttle through the countryside. Driving a chopper was something totally different. It was peaceful cruising. The destination was unimportant, the ride was the destination.

AME-director: Walter F. Kuntze
 

By 1973 a young businessman, Walter F. Kuntze and his new company AME Chopper Products began to develop the first German made Choppers in Kassel Germany, near Frankfurt
 

The American built choppers, particularly like those used in the movie “Easy Rider” provided the young business man with a vision. But the original mold of the hard as bone US-bikes could not be carried over to German circumstances. A legal approval for road service made it impossible due to the TÜV regulations..  

The team around Walter Kuntze became the pioneers of the Chopper  “Made in Germany”.  Material quality and machining precision were put under German norms and all designs were simultaneous engineered with close cooperation of the German TÜV. “ Only by this way was it possible to put the first AME-Chopper on tires in the early 70’s. By this AME was the first company in Germany that made it happen that an individual bike, build by following the American Chopper Dream, was manufactured according the strict German technical TÜV laws 

AME ST800 from 1980

AME gave the German Chopper fans an undreamed of freedom for self-realization with this step. In the first self designed chopper frames either Honda CB 750/950 or Kawasaki Z900/Z1000 engines could be used. All other AME parts like gas tanks, handle bars, head lights, chopper kits, spoke wheels, forward controls, exhaust systems, seats, and fenders were subject to internal AME quality norms. No matter whether the customer ordered a complete AME Chopper, or decided to go with a self installation from the construction kit system or just customized his bike with AME chopper parts the result was the same. A bike that corresponded to the very personal liking and imagination of the customer.

AME became the number one Chopper manufacturer in Germany without getting into series production at any time. You’ll never see an AME Chopper look like another. Individuality of the chopper was the target in the beginning and will be the target in the future of all AME Chopper development work. Actually there is nearly no bike model since 1973 that hasn’t gone through the fingers of an AME engineer. Thereby it doesn’t matter whether it is a 125ccm Honda Rebel, the Yamaha XV 535 Virago, Suzuki LS 650 Savage, all Suzuki Intruder-models and of course all kinds of Harleys, even BMW-Boxer models as well as Moto Guzzis. “Indeed we installed huge four cylinder engines in our first frame kits, but that was never our company philosophy. In the end the feeling of freedom and the enjoyment of riding a chopper isn’t defined by one-, two-, four- or six cylinder engines. It is the attitude of the biker. He decides which bike he wants to ride, what he likes or not. If he doesn’t like it, he customizes it.