101 Fun Facts About Motorcycle

What was the first internal combustion, petrol-fuelled motorcycle?

The Daimler Reitwagen of 1885 was built as a test bed for Daimler and Maybach's new petrol engine, which they meant for carriages.

Which 1894 machine was the first series production motorcycle?

The Hildebrand & Wolfmüller was designed by former steam-engine engineers, so its engine drove the rear wheel directly through connecting rods, as a steam engine would.

Which star rides a stolen motorcycle toward the Swiss border in the 1963 film The Great Escape?

Steve McQueen did most of his own riding and even put on a German uniform to chase himself, though stuntman Bud Ekins is widely credited with the famous fence jump.

Which machine is the biggest selling motor vehicle of all time?

The Honda Super Cub was designed so it could be ridden one-handed, leaving noodle-shop delivery riders a free hand to balance their orders.

Per mile travelled in 2024, US motorcyclists died at roughly how many times the rate of car occupants?

About 27 times: 28.00 deaths per 100 million miles against 1.05 for cars, because a crashing rider lacks the protection of an enclosed vehicle.

In Easy Rider, what was Peter Fonda's stars-and-stripes Harley chopper called?

Captain America, the chopper Fonda rode, was stolen along with Dennis Hopper's bikes before the film was even released.

Why did rivals oppose Harley-Davidson's engine-sound trademark?

Their V-twins sound similar, rivals such as Honda and Yamaha argued, and after almost six years of opposition Harley-Davidson dropped the application in 2000.

Which company bought Harley-Davidson in 1969, presiding over a period of quality problems?

American Machine and Foundry later sold the company back to 13 Harley executives led by Vaughn Beals, who improved quality and turned the business around.

Why was the first TT held on the Isle of Man?

A racing ban on Britain's roads sent organisers to the island, whose authorities agreed to close public roads for the race.

Why were the 2001 Isle of Man TT races cancelled?

A foot-and-mouth outbreak was destroying cattle across mainland Britain, and there were fears the TT's visiting crowds would carry the disease to the island.

Why did the Isle of Man TT lose its world championship status after 1976?

Top riders boycotted it, calling the Mountain Course too dangerous for world championship racing.

Whose record 26 Isle of Man TT wins did his nephew pass in 2024?

Joey Dunlop also drove across Europe with aid for Romania and Albania, charity work recognised with an OBE.

Which 1960s advertising slogan sold small Japanese motorcycles to Americans?

You meet the nicest people, the ads promised, showing housewives and other respectable riders and recasting a pastime tied to black-jacketed outlaws.

Which Italian company makes the Vespa?

Piaggio had built bomber planes, and with its Pontedera plant wrecked by bombing it turned to a simple, cheap scooter to get postwar Italy moving.

What does the word 'Vespa' mean?

Wasp is what vespa means in Italian, and the scooter is said to have been named for its narrow waist, like the insect's.

What did the Vespa's designer, Corradino D'Ascanio, think of motorcycles?

That dislike is exactly why the scooter has a step-through frame and enclosed engine. He was an aeronautical engineer by training.

Which 1953 film sent sales of the Vespa scooter soaring?

Roman Holiday had Audrey Hepburn's runaway princess ride a Vespa through Rome with Gregory Peck, and the scooter's sales soared afterwards.

What did the company behind Yamaha motorcycles make for decades before building its first motorcycle in 1955?

Pianos and organs were its trade from the 1880s, which is why the Yamaha logo still shows three crossed tuning forks.

Which rider won a record 15 Grand Prix motorcycle world championships?

Giacomo Agostini shocked racing by leaving MV Agusta for Yamaha in 1974, then won the Daytona 200 on his first ride for his new team.

How did the 2002 Grand Prix rules favour four-stroke bikes?

Bigger engines, up to 990cc against 500cc for two-strokes, let four-strokes dominate, and two-strokes soon vanished from the premier class.

What was Evel Knievel's real first name?

Robert Knievel reportedly shared a 1956 night in jail with a man called Awful Knofel, which led to the nickname Evil Knievel, later respelled Evel.

Which canyon did Evel Knievel try to cross in a rocket-powered cycle in 1974?

Snake River Canyon was his fallback after the government refused to let him jump the Grand Canyon, and the early parachute left him drifting back to earth.

After crashing at Wembley Stadium in 1975, what did Evel Knievel tell the crowd?

He would never jump again, he promised, then walked off rather than take a stretcher; that October he jumped 14 buses at Kings Island in Ohio.

What injuries did Knievel suffer in his famous Caesars Palace crash?

A crushed pelvis and femur were among his injuries, yet the crash, which actress Linda Evans helped film, made him more famous than ever.

Why did US states repeal helmet laws after 1976?

Congress lifted a penalty that had pushed all but three states into universal helmet laws by 1975, and states soon began repealing them.

Whose fatal motorcycle crash spurred research that made British Army despatch riders wear helmets?

T. E. Lawrence swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles, and Hugh Cairns, a neurosurgeon who attended him, went on to prove what crash helmets could do.

Whose 1952 journey across South America on an old Norton motorcycle is told in The Motorcycle Diaries?

Che Guevara was still a medical student, and when the bike broke down he and a friend went on by boat and on horseback, seeing poverty that marked him.

Why did British racing star Barry Sheene drill a hole in the chin of his crash helmet?

To smoke on the grid, Sheene cut the hole; he had smoked since childhood, a habit blamed for the cancer that killed him in 2003.

In which US state is the Sturgis rally held?

South Dakota's Black Hills hosted the rally even during the 2020 pandemic, and health officials in many states later traced virus cases back to it.

What did Sturgis ban in City Park during the rally?

Camping there ended in the early 1980s, over residents alarmed by rally crowds by one account, or over fire outbreaks by the rally's own timeline.

What did Sturgis long rely on to estimate how many people attended its motorcycle rally?

Vehicle road counters tallied vehicles, not people, so a motorcycle carrying two riders or a car full of passengers counted only once.

What was Ducati's postwar Cucciolo?

A bicycle engine that clipped onto ordinary bikes, it sold so well in postwar Italy that Ducati built complete motorcycles around it.

Which valve system is Ducati famous for?

Desmodromic valves are shut by a cam rather than a spring, and a desmo Ducati twin carried Mike Hailwood to victory at the 1978 Isle of Man TT after 11 years away.

Which carmaker bought Ducati in 2012?

Audi was the buyer, though the deal owed much to Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch, a keen motorcyclist who had wanted Ducati for years.

Which rider gave Ducati its first Grand Prix world championship, in 2007?

Casey Stoner won a second title with Honda in 2011, then announced his retirement as reigning champion in 2012, saying he had lost his passion for the sport.

In which US city did Harley-Davidson begin and still keep its headquarters?

Milwaukee's Harley-Davidson, short of cash in the Depression, sold blueprints and machinery to a Japanese firm, which went on to build the bikes itself.

Which outboard-motor pioneer helped Harley and Davidson with their bigger early engine?

Ole Evinrude later sold his outboard firm to care for his ailing wife Bess, who had written its first ads, and the couple later started a new one together.

Harley-Davidson's polite muffler earned its 1906 model which advertising nickname?

The Silent Gray Fellow sold quiet, reliable bikes, though Harley's later marketing leaned into a rough, bad-boy biker image.

Besides Harley-Davidson, which other American motorcycle maker survived the Great Depression?

Indian made motorcycles until its 1953 bankruptcy, which left Harley as America's only major motorcycle maker for decades until the name was revived.

Harley's 'hog' nickname traces to a 1920s racing team that did what after a win?

Took a victory lap with a pig, their live mascot; Harley later turned the nickname into HOG, the Harley Owners Group.

Harley-Davidson's three-wheeled delivery vehicle, in production until 1973, was called what?

Servi-Car trikes were sold for deliveries but became a police favourite, and some departments still rode them into the 1990s.

Harley-Davidson bought half of which Italian maker's motorcycle division in 1960?

Aermacchi then shipped its single-cylinder bikes to America wearing Harley badges, sold as the Harley-Davidson Sprint.

Which Harley-Davidson model did Arnold Schwarzenegger ride in Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

Fat Boy is named for how wide the bike looks head-on; the story that it combines the atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy is a myth.

Harley-Davidson's first electric motorcycle, released in 2019, is called what?

LiveWire prototypes carried Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman 13,000 miles from the tip of Argentina to Los Angeles for the TV series Long Way Up.

The first Harley-Davidson factory outside the United States opened in 1998 in which country?

The Manaus plant sits in a free economic zone in the Amazon; the Thai plant and a short-lived Delhi-area subsidiary came much later.

Which parka-wearing, scooter-riding British youth tribe fought leather-clad bikers at seaside resorts in 1964?

Mods clashed with rockers over the Whitsun weekend in towns like Brighton and Margate, and scores of youths were jailed; the film Quadrophenia later dramatised it.

Which 1915 Triumph, nicknamed the 'Trusty Triumph', is often called the first modern motorcycle?

Model H bikes, some 30,000 of them, went to Allied forces in World War I after Triumph switched production to the war effort.

BMW's first motorcycle, the 1923 R32, used which engine layout that is still a company hallmark?

Opposed-twin boxer engines powered German army BMWs in World War II, and the US Army had Harley-Davidson build about 1,000 shaft-drive copies.

What was Royal Enfield's 125cc wartime 'Flying Flea' designed to do?

Parachute in with troops, packed inside protective cradles, so airborne soldiers had their own transport once they landed.

Honda's 1969 CB750 is often called the first of which kind of motorcycle?

Superbike was the new class it created, and British bikes, long the sporty choice in America, never won back the ground they lost to it.

Which company, once a joint venture with Honda, became India's largest two-wheeler maker in 2001?

Hero MotoCorp was Hero Honda until the partners agreed to split, and the founding Munjal family bought out Honda's 26% stake.

Which British luxury carmaker began in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company, building motorcycle sidecars in Blackpool?

Jaguar grew out of a sidecar business started by two motorcycle enthusiasts, William Lyons and William Walmsley, who then moved on to building bodies for passenger cars.

Which motorcycle maker started out in 1909 building weaving looms for Japan's silk industry?

Suzuki spent some 30 years perfecting looms before its founder, Michio Suzuki, decided the company needed to diversify and began looking at other products.

The Hayabusa, a 1999 Japanese sport bike built to be the world's fastest, is named after which bird?

Peregrine falcon is what the Japanese word means, and the name was a jab: the bird preys on blackbirds, and the bike was built to unseat Honda's Super Blackbird as the fastest on sale.

Which Hollywood actor co-founded Arch Motorcycle in 2011 with Gard Hollinger, a builder hired to customise a Harley?

Keanu Reeves liked the rebuilt Harley so much that he talked a reluctant Hollinger into starting a company to produce it, and their first bike, the KRGT-1, launched in 2014.

Which singer stopped touring for seven years after crashing a Triumph motorcycle near Woodstock, New York, in 1966?

Bob Dylan was riding a Triumph Tiger 100 near his home when he crashed, and he later admitted the real reason for the long break was that he wanted out of the rat race.

Which motorcycle club, formed in Fontana, California in 1948, borrowed a name used by American WWII flying squadrons?

Hells Angels was a nickname more than one US squadron carried in World War II, and those crews are believed to have taken it from a 1930 Howard Hughes aviation film.

Rollie Free broke the American motorcycle speed record in 1948 lying flat on a Vincent, dressed in little but what?

A bathing suit, a shower cap and borrowed sneakers were all Free wore at 150 mph, because his leathers had torn on earlier runs; the photo is called the most famous in motorcycling.

Which motorcycle brand traces its roots to a Swedish musket factory founded in 1689?

Husqvarna's logo still depicts a gun sight viewed from the end of the barrel, a nod to the muskets it made centuries before it built motorcycles.

Which European sports-car maker helped Harley-Davidson develop the liquid-cooled Revolution engine of the V-Rod?

Porsche had teamed up with Harley before, on the Nova project of the 1970s, which was also a radical departure from the company's traditional lineup.

Triumph's Bonneville is named after salt flats in which US state, where a Triumph-engined streamliner hit 214 mph?

Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats gave the bike its name after Texan racer Johnny Allen averaged 214 mph there in 1956, winning the record back from a rival NSU team.

Which Italian racer, nicknamed the Doctor, rode with the number 46 for an entire Grand Prix career?

Valentino Rossi took the 46 from his father, who had raced with it, and MotoGP retired the number in his honour at the 2022 Italian Grand Prix.

Which band's 1968 biker anthem Born to Be Wild was the first rock song to use the term heavy metal?

Steppenwolf used the words to describe a motorcycle rather than a style of music, yet the song is sometimes called the first heavy metal record.

Which form of motorcycle racing, run on oval dirt tracks, uses bikes with one gear and no brakes?

Speedway riders slow down by sliding the bike sideways into each bend, and under the rules the engines must burn pure methanol.

Which carnival sideshow sends motorcyclists around the vertical inside of a barrel-shaped wooden cylinder?

Wall of Death shows grew out of American board track racing, and the first carnival version appeared at New York's Coney Island in 1911.

Which tiny Honda, named for how hunched riders looked on board, began in 1961 as a ride at a Japanese amusement park?

Monkey bikes started with the Z100, built as a children's ride for the Tama Tech park, and the first ones had no suspension at all.

What nickname do bikers give the very tall handlebars that lift a chopper rider's hands to shoulder height or above?

Ape hangers can rise two feet or more above the forks, which is why some jurisdictions set a legal limit on how high they may go.

Which American daredevil landed the first double backflip in freestyle motocross competition at the 2006 X Games?

Travis Pastrana's double backflip earned 98.60 from the judges, the highest score in the X Games Best Trick competition.

Which girl group topped the US chart in 1964 with Leader of the Pack, a song that ends in a motorcycle crash?

The Shangri-Las' lead singer Mary Weiss later denied the legend that a real motorcycle was brought into the studio to record the engine roar.

Which magazine publisher founded the Capitalist Tools motorcycle club and gave Elizabeth Taylor a purple Harley?

Malcolm Forbes took up motorcycling late in life, yet he led club tours from his New Jersey estate and was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.

Who remains the only person to win world championships on both motorcycles and in Formula One cars?

John Surtees collected seven motorcycle world titles before switching to cars and taking the 1964 Formula One crown with Ferrari.

Which Spanish rider won the 2013 MotoGP title as a rookie, becoming the youngest premier-class champion at age 20?

Marc Márquez finished on the podium in his very first MotoGP race, in Qatar, and sealed the crown at 20 years and 266 days old.

Which maker of orange dirt bikes won the Dakar Rally's motorcycle class at every running from 2001 to 2019?

KTM, an Austrian firm, started the streak with Italian rider Fabrizio Meoni, seven years after its factory team first entered the desert race.

Which motorcycle sport docks riders a point each time a foot touches the ground on an obstacle course?

Trials riders call each touch a dab, and getting through a section without a single one is known as cleaning it.

Which stunt, the reverse of a wheelie, lifts a motorcycle's rear wheel by braking hard at the front?

Stoppie riders then ease off the brake to roll a short way on the front wheel alone, and the trick is also known as an endo.

What is the technique of briefly pushing a motorcycle's bars left in order to lean and turn right called?

Countersteering works because a bike has to lean before it can turn, and a brief steer the wrong way is what tips it into that lean.

On a typical motorcycle's foot-operated gearbox, where does neutral sit in the shift pattern?

Between first and second is where neutral hides, half a click from either gear, which is why riders describe a five-speed as one down, four up.

Which word for a motorcycle's passenger seat once meant a cushion fitted behind the saddle on horseback?

Pillion goes back through a Celtic word to the Latin for skin or pelt, because animal pelts once served as that extra seat behind a rider.

Which Honda touring bike became the first production motorcycle to offer an airbag, in 2006?

Gold Wing airbags rely on sensors in the front forks to detect a severe frontal crash, slowing the rider before he or she can be thrown from the bike.

Which colour is Kawasaki's traditional racing livery, giving many Kawasaki race squads their team name?

Green is so tied to Kawasaki that many of its squads race as Team Green, a name also given to its support programme for amateur motocross racers.

Which California town's rowdy 1947 Fourth of July motorcycle rally inspired the Marlon Brando film The Wild One?

Hollister owes much of its notoriety to a Life magazine photo of a drunken rider among beer bottles, a scene one bystander insisted the photographer had staged.

Which state hosts Laconia Motorcycle Week, a rally that began in 1916 when riders gathered at Weirs Beach?

New Hampshire's Lakes Region was already a favourite ride for motorcyclists from New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Montreal when a few hundred met there in 1916.

Which American motorcycle race, founded in 1937, ran on a course that used the beach itself until 1961?

Daytona 200 exists because promoter Bill France Sr. arranged for a 200-mile race in Savannah to be moved to Florida, hoping to boost the local economy.

Which Chicago bicycle company bought the Excelsior and Henderson motorcycle makers, then dropped both in 1931?

Schwinn could find no buyer for Excelsior-Henderson after the stock market crash wrecked the American motorcycle industry, so the bikes were simply discontinued.

Which French carmaker built a first motorcycle in 1898, with a De Dion-Bouton engine mounted on the rear wheel?

Peugeot displayed that first machine at the 1898 Paris Exhibition but never put it into production.

Which snowmobile and ATV maker created Victory Motorcycles in the 1990s to chase Harley-Davidson's success?

Polaris based Victory in Spirit Lake, Iowa, and unveiled its first bike, the V92C, in 1997 at Planet Hollywood in the Mall of America.

Which country was the birthplace of Siegfried Bettmann, who founded Britain's Triumph and became Mayor of Coventry?

Germany went to war with Britain during his term, and Bettmann was removed as mayor because of his origins even though he was a naturalised British citizen.

Which Italian scooter brand, built by Innocenti, is named after the Milan suburb where the factory stood?

Lambretta comes from Lambrate, a district named after the river Lambro, and the scooters were later built under licence from Argentina to Spain.

Motoball, where every player except the goalkeeper rides a motorcycle, is a version of which sport?

Soccer on motorcycles is played five a side with a ball about 40 centimetres across, and the goalkeeper is the only player on foot.

In which region are motorcycle taxis called boda bodas, a name that recalls 1980s border smuggling runs?

East Africa's name for them comes from the idea of travelling border to border, after carriers who worked the frontier between Uganda and Kenya.

Which British champion came back after an 11-year break to win at the 1978 Isle of Man TT, aged 38?

Mike Hailwood had spent part of the gap racing Formula One cars, and few observers thought he could still compete before he won on a Ducati lent by a Manchester dealership.

Which former dirt-track racer became the first American to win a Grand Prix motorcycle world championship, in 1978?

Kenny Roberts cornered with a knee skimming the track, taping on makeshift pads, and that style led to the knee pucks every road racer wears today.

Which Australian won five consecutive 500cc world championships in the 1990s after a crash that nearly cost a leg?

Mick Doohan's damaged right foot could no longer work the rear brake pedal, so he switched to a brake operated by his left thumb.

Which American motocross racer, nicknamed the GOAT, won all 24 motos of an outdoor season in both 2002 and 2004?

Ricky Carmichael's second perfect season came on his first four-stroke bike, straight after a knee injury had kept him out of the stadium series.

Which circuit, nicknamed the Cathedral of Speed, has hosted Grand Prix motorcycle racing since the series began in 1949?

Assen is the home of the Dutch TT, a race first held in 1925 on country roads through nearby villages before moving to the town a year later.

Which Italian marque's eagle badge honours a would-be founder, a pilot killed in a crash days after World War I?

Moto Guzzi was dreamed up by two air corps pilots and their mechanic; Giovanni Ravelli, who was meant to race the bikes, died before the firm was founded.

Which British marque, born in Birmingham's Gun Quarter in 1861, later became the world's largest motorcycle producer?

BSA was formed by fourteen gunsmiths to make guns by machine, and it took the top spot in motorcycles after buying its rival Triumph in 1951.

Which British marque of the 1920s and 1930s was dubbed the Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles for its fit and finish?

Brough Superior machines were the most expensive road bikes in the world, and each was test ridden and personally certified by George Brough before delivery.

Which country was home to John Britten, the engineer who designed the record-setting Britten V1000 race bike?

New Zealand engineer John Britten hand-built the bike with a group of friends in Christchurch, and just ten V1000s were ever made; they now sit in collections and museums around the world.

Which American sport bike brand, started in 1983 by a former Harley-Davidson engineer, carried fuel inside the frame?

Buell XB models also used the swingarm as the oil tank, part of the founder's drive to keep a bike's mass as central as possible.

What do bikers call the tall backrest fitted at the rear of a chopper for a passenger to recline against?

Sissy bar is the usual name, though it is also called a sister bar, and riders use it as an anchor point for strapping on luggage.