HISTORY: Beautiful Old Bikes

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History

The inspiration for the earliest dirt bike, and arguably the first motorcycle, was designed and built by the German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in Bad Cannstatt (since 1905 a city district of Stuttgart) in 1885. The first petroleum-powered vehicle, it was essentially a motorized bicycle, although the inventors called their invention the Reitwagen ("riding car"). They had not set out to create a vehicle form but to build a simple carriage for the engine, which was the focus of their endeavours.

However, if one counts two wheels with steam propulsion as being a motorcycle, then the first one may have been American. One such machine was demonstrated at fairs and circuses in the eastern US in 1867, built by Sylvester Howard Roper of Roxbury, Massachusetts. There is an existing example of a Roper machine dated 1869. But there is no patent existing and nothing proves it was working. It's powered by a charcoal-fired two-cylinder engine, whose connecting rods directly drive a crank on the rear wheel. This machine predates the invention of the safety bicycle by many years, so its chassis is also based on the "boneshaker" bike. In 1868, the French engineer Louis-Guillaume Perreaux patented a similar steam-powered motorcycle, probably invented independent of Roper. In his case a patent exists (dated 1868), but nothing indicates his invention had moved before 1871. In 1894, the Hildebrand & Wolfmüller became the first motorcycle available for purchase.

In the early period of motorcycle history there were many manufacturers as producers of bicycles adapted their designs for the new internal combustion engine. As the engines became more powerful and designs outgrew the bicycle origins, the number of motorcycle producers increased.

Until the First World War, the largest motorcycle manufacturer was Indian. After that, this honour went to Harley-Davidson, until 1928 when DKW took over as the largest manufacturer. BMW motorcycles came on the scene in 1923 with shaft drive and an opposed-twin or "boxer" engine enclosed with the transmission in a single aluminum housing (photo right).

After the Second World War, the BSA Group purchased Triumph Motorcycles in 1951 to become the largest producer of motorcycles in the world claiming "one in four". The German NSU was the largest manufacturer from 1955 until the 1970s when Honda became the largest manufacturer -- a title it holds to this day. British manufacturers (Triumph, BSA, Norton) retained a dominant position in some markets until the rise of the Japanese manufacturers (led by Honda) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who were able to produce designs more quickly, more cheaply, and of better quality than their competitors. The British manufacturers became defunct as mass-market producers.

Today the Japanese manufacturers, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha dominate the motorcycle industry, although Harley-Davidson still maintains a high degree of popularity in the United States. Recent years have also seen a resurgence in the popularity of many other brands including BMW, Triumph and Ducati, and the emergence of Victory as a second successful mass-builder of big-twin American cruisers.