In History

  What do Henry Winkler, Paul Newman, and Peter Fonda have in common—besides the fact that they’re all entertainment icons? Here’s a not-so-obvious answer: motorcycles. Although the three weren’t all motorcycle enthusiasts—Winkler couldn’t even ride when he scored the part of Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli in Happy Days—they each portrayed a motorcycle-riding character in the movies […]

Riding a powerful and dangerous machine is, let’s face it, in many ways a young person’s game. That, along with the fact that bikes are generally more attainable than cars and are relatively easy to store, makes them very popular among millennials. Yet misconceptions about young motorcycle collectors persist. As a millennial collector myself, I’ve

You won’t find a longer unfaired race bike in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame museum than the BSA that carried Earl Bowlby to national hillclimb fame. When he retired from competition after the 1990 season, Bowlby had captured 10 AMA Hillclimb national championships, plus six Canadian titles. He was inducted to the AMA Motorcycle

Up until the early 1960s, BSA was the largest producer of motorcycles in the world. The 1950s had been a good decade for the marque, with the success of the Gold Star as well as the development of two well-respected pre-unit (separate gearbox and engine), vertical twin-engine series: the A7 and A10. Not only was

Editor’s Note: Recently one of our esteemed Bikernet™ contributors sent me a batch of historic Motordrome shots, then a pile of great shots of classic racing bikes from that era. I recently wrote a screenplay, called Splintered Road, about this era around WWI and it’s being looked at in Hollywood. This year one of the

“Wild Bill” Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American West, was murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota. Born in Illinois in 1837, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok first gained notoriety as a gunfighter in 1861 when he coolly shot three men who were trying to kill him. A highly sensationalized account of the gunfight

We don’t generally cover motorcycles, but we’re going to make an exception for these bikes since they feature car engines. Not powerplants that are cut-down or derived from an automotive application—no, these are quite literally car engines shoehorned into motorcycle frames with varying degrees of success and ergonomics. To make this list, the resulting car-hearted

Editor’s Note: Bikernet got ahold of an historic home in Deadwood in the Presidential area. We decided on a Chinese whorehouse theme. We discovered this 110 year-old home was built over the original cemetery where Wild Bill was buried. Someone got the bright idea to dig up the bodies and move them up above Lincoln

We’ve all heard the stories of how Harley-Davidson began life in 1903 in a Milwaukee woodshed on the site of what is now the headquarters of Miller Brewing Company. But with motorcycle production set to jump from around 1000 units in 1909 to nearly 30,000 by 1920, the Motor Company’s industrial digs had to change,

    On 4th September 1969, a film was released in the United Kingdom that would have more effect on our little world of custom motorcycling than any other. It was, of course, Easy Rider.   Almost exactly fifty years later, it still resonates with us, although its language and ethos may have dated over