When Adrian Van Anz designed his first motorized bike, he didn’t expect to sell it.

“The dirty word in the motorcycle and bicycle community is ‘moped’,” Van Anz said. “But the truth is, it’s the perfect vehicle for 90 percent of people out there. It goes fast enough to do what they want it to do. I basically wanted a moped to get around on, but didn’t see any mopeds that I would want to be seen getting around on, so I built my own.”

A lifelong fan of board track racing — an early, often deadly type of motorcycle racing popular in the 1910’s — Van Anz designed a motorized bike in the same style as the board track motorcycles from a century earlier.

Van Anz took his bike to lunch at Fred Segal Café one day, where another patron offered him $5,000 on the spot for it.

“I didn’t think it would connect with many people, because most people don’t get the board track reference,” Van Anz said. “To them, it’s just a funny-looking bike. But that’s when I realized there might be a market for it. I think it looks aggressive but at the same time approachable. When you see a Ducati motorcycle, it looks beautiful, but it also looks like it wants to kill you. Whereas when you see this, it looks cool and sexy and custom, but it doesn’t look like it wants to throw you off a cliff somewhere.”

Van Anz, an industrial designer, eventually opened the Derringer Cycles shop on 3rd Street, where he sells his motorized bikes for $3,500 each. Still, most of the sales still occur online, where there is an eight to 10 week waiting list for one of the custom-made bikes, which are available in over 200 colors, or with your name hand-stenciled on to the frame.

Unlike original board track motorcycles, which hit speeds of up to 100 mph and had a habit of flying off the track into the crowd, the Derringer bikes only reach a much safer 35 mph — a speed a hard-pedaling cyclist could achieve. The bikes do, however, get 180 miles per gallon of fuel, though Van Anz said he doesn’t think his customers buy electric bikes for fuel efficiency.

“To be honest, these are really more personal luxury items than personal transportation items,” he said. “They sit in garages, and people ride them to get coffee or something, although they work perfect if you want to get around.”

Along with the bikes, other personal style items are offered at the 3rd street store — books on board track racing; Derringer T-shirts; colorful motorcycle helmets (which come with the bike); leather tool kits; and even a couple of carbide acetylene lamps, which were early headlights. Van Anz once tried set them off outside Teroni on Beverly Boulevard, a huge crowd-pleaser until it shot a four-foot flame out of its side.

Though the bikes may be more about style than transportation, Van Anz said Derringer is proud of bringing a small, fuel-efficient vehicle into the market .

“One of our biggest accomplishments is getting people who would never buy a moped or a scooter to consider us,” he said. “Then they find that it’s a perfect fit for what they need it to do.”

Van Anz is working on an electric bike of its own, which Van Anz said would offer a lot of the same features that make the motorized bikes special, but without “the final name in hand stencil and stuff like that that just takes forever.”

When Adrian Van Anz designed his first motorized bike, he didn’t expect to sell it.

“The dirty word in the motorcycle and bicycle community is ‘moped’,” Van Anz said. “But the truth is, it’s the perfect vehicle for 90 percent of people out there. It goes fast enough to do what they want it to do. I basically wanted a moped to get around on, but didn’t see any mopeds that I would want to be seen getting around on, so I built my own.”

A lifelong fan of board track racing — an early, often deadly type of motorcycle racing popular in the 1910’s — Van Anz designed a motorized bike in the same style as the board track motorcycles from a century earlier.

Van Anz took his bike to lunch at Fred Segal Café one day, where another patron offered him $5,000 on the spot for it.

“I didn’t think it would connect with many people, because most people don’t get the board track reference,” Van Anz said. “To them, it’s just a funny-looking bike. But that’s when I realized there might be a market for it. I think it looks aggressive but at the same time approachable. When you see a Ducati motorcycle, it looks beautiful, but it also looks like it wants to kill you. Whereas when you see this, it looks cool and sexy and custom, but it doesn’t look like it wants to throw you off a cliff somewhere.”

Van Anz, an industrial designer, eventually opened the Derringer Cycles shop on 3rd Street, where he sells his motorized bikes for $3,500 each. Still, most of the sales still occur online, where there is an eight to 10 week waiting list for one of the custom-made bikes, which are available in over 200 colors, or with your name hand-stenciled on to the frame.

Unlike original board track motorcycles, which hit speeds of up to 100 mph and had a habit of flying off the track into the crowd, the Derringer bikes only reach a much safer 35 mph — a speed a hard-pedaling cyclist could achieve. The bikes do, however, get 180 miles per gallon of fuel, though Van Anz said he doesn’t think his customers buy electric bikes for fuel efficiency.

“To be honest, these are really more personal luxury items than personal transportation items,” he said. “They sit in garages, and people ride them to get coffee or something, although they work perfect if you want to get around.”

Along with the bikes, other personal style items are offered at the 3rd street store — books on board track racing; Derringer T-shirts; colorful motorcycle helmets (which come with the bike); leather tool kits; and even a couple of carbide acetylene lamps, which were early headlights. Van Anz once tried set them off outside Teroni on Beverly Boulevard, a huge crowd-pleaser until it shot a four-foot flame out of its side.

Though the bikes may be more about style than transportation, Van Anz said Derringer is proud of bringing a small, fuel-efficient vehicle into the market .

“One of our biggest accomplishments is getting people who would never buy a moped or a scooter to consider us,” he said. “Then they find that it’s a perfect fit for what they need it to do.”

Van Anz is working on an electric bike of its own, which Van Anz said would offer a lot of the same features that make the motorized bikes special, but without “the final name in hand stencil and stuff like that that just takes forever.”