RETRO Motorbikes

1907 HARLEY DAVIDSON ‘STRAP TANK’ SINGLE -$352,000 Triumph Scrambler 1907 HARLEY DAVIDSON ‘STRAP TANK’ SINGLE -$352,000 Best Vintage Motorcycle for the Enduro Lover: Everyone knows the Triumph Bonneville, but it’s the rough-and-ready Scrambler that gets our attention. The 865cc eight-valve-powered motorcycle is actually based on the Bonneville but toughened up and made to look like the classic Triumph TR6C Trophy Special from the late 1960s. The engine’s been tweaked to give it more low-end grunt, with 90 percent of the power available at 2,500 rpms. The Scrambler aesthetic is simply glorious with its vintage fuel tank, high-level twin pipes, chunky knobby tires and exposed tubular steel twin cradle frame. This is the kind of bike that you wouldn’t mind getting a little dirty, if only for hammering out a touch more back-roads fun. Fourth most expensive vintage motorcycles. William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson began experimenting with  combustion engines in the late-1890s. After successfully experimenting with 400cc and 475cc engines, they commenced production of the first Harley-Davidson, offered for sale in 1904. So this is the first bike ever produced by the cruiser giants. It was one of the few single cylinder motorcycles ever produced by Harley Davidson. It was, just like other motorcycles of those times, an engine mounted on a cycle frame motorcycle.

1949 E90 AJS Porcupine – $7 Million Hildebrand & Wolf Müller – $3.5 million Only four versions of this motorcycle were ever produced. The company, along with Les Graham, won one World Championship back in 1949 with this bike. The design for the AJS bike changed a few years later, so the world championship edition of this bike remains one of the rarest motorcycles now, which obviously gives it a lot of cache. Some say that the Porcupine is one of the most innovative and beautiful motorcycles ever designed. At 7 million dollars, it had better be, because that is an almost absurdly exorbitant price tag for a two-wheeler. This bike was only manufactured between 1894 and 1897. It was the first motorcycle ever produced. It’s neither very fast (28 miles an hour top speed) nor very heavy. Back then, motorcycles were not machines as powerful as automobiles, but, as their name promises, bicycles with a rinky-dink put-put motor in them to help a panting man sail uphill. Most of the existing copies of this bike are in museums in, to name a few, Germany, London, Detroit, Maine, or Indonesia.

Link to Timeline of motorcycles 1915 Cyclone – $520,000 The Cyclone is historically important motorcycle. It is nearly 100 years old right now, but what is more impressive that only 300 Cyclones was build back then in 1910’s. In these days only 8 (12?) originals were found. As Indian, another famous board-track motorcycle, Cyclone had huge 1000cc engine, which produced nearly 50bhp! (though compression rate was only 5.5:1, which may seem low) With such power and very low weight (technically it was a bicycle with huge engine) Cyclone was able to hit almost 200km/h!