GOLD PLATED CUSTOM CHOPPER

                                GOLD PLATED CUSTOM CHOPPER

For a custom chopper competition in 2007, Nehme built a bike he calls "Nehmesis." The gold-plated chopper stretches nearly 11 feet and took more than 3,000 man hours to build. The chrome and gold plating alone cost around $25,000, and the wheels were another $25,000 total.

Nehme said the total amount invested in Nehmesis, including labor, was somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 — not that it's for sale. Years from now, if he ever did decide to sell the custom creation, Nehme said he would want visitation rights.

"I got attached to that bike," he said. "One day, I'm gonna be old. And I can have that bike sittin' there and say, 'I built that,' and be proud of it"

For the past 15 years, the owner of BMS Choppers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been creating some of the wildest and most expensive motorcycles in the world.

He's currently working on the "Drum Bike," a three-wheeler with a fully working drum set that will cost the buyer around $100,000. He's also modified a Y2K superbike with carbon fiber, which boosted the price some five figures to around $200,000 — and raised its speed to more than 200 mph.

His clients have included Diddy, Flo Rida and Ice T.

"Most of our clientele, they want what they want," Nehme told CNBC's "Secret Lives of the Super Rich." "They can afford what they want. And they pay the price to have it."

A chopper is a type of custom motorcycle which emerged in California in the late 1950s. The chopper is perhaps the most extreme of all custom styles, often using radically modified steering angles and lengthened forks for a stretched-out appearance. They can be built from an original motorcycle which is modified ("chopped") or built from scratch. Some of the characteristic features of choppers are long front ends with extended forks often coupled with an increased rake angle, hardtail frames (frames without rear suspension), very tall "ape hanger" or very short "drag" handlebars,lengthened or stretched frames, and larger than stock front wheels. The "sissy bar", a set of tubes that connect the rear fender with the frame, and which are often extended several feet high, is a signature feature on many choppers.

Perhaps the best known choppers are the two customized Harley-Davidsons, the "Captain America" and "Billy Bike", seen in the 1969 film.