Iconic Motorcycles Celebrated for Their Design

BMW's first motorcycle, from 1923, is the rare case of a layout so right that a company has never let it go. Max Friz set a flat twin with its cylinders jutting into the airstream on either side, cooling both equally, and sent power to the rear wheel through a shaft rather than a chain. Neither idea was new on its own. Putting them together in one tidy, symmetrical package was, and a century later BMW's boxer bikes still read as descendants of this one. For anyone interested in how engineering becomes identity, this is the starting point.

George Brough built the SS100 in Nottingham from 1924 as the machine he wanted to ride, and a journalist's phrase, "the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles," stuck because the finish backed it up. The engineering underneath was largely conventional; the long, low stance, the big V-twin and the deep, rounded tank were what made it look like nothing else on the road. Its fame owes as much to its owners as its lines. T. E. Lawrence was killed on an SS100 in 1935 after swerving to avoid two boys on bicycles. Treat it as the early proof that a motorcycle could be sold on craft and presence rather than novelty.

Harley-Davidson Model EL, 1936 Harley's first overhead-valve big twin is where the American cruiser silhouette was fixed. The rocker covers that gave the engine its nickname, the teardrop tank and the instrument panel set on top of it became styling cues the company carried forward for decades. Look at the diagonal line running from the tank down to the rear axle and you can see every later big twin in outline. The first year was not trouble-free, with oil leaks and valve-spring failures that Harley sent repair kits to dealers to fix, so this is a design landmark rather than a model of early reliability.

The Black Shadow of 1948 is engineering worn on the outside. Philip Vincent and Phil Irving hung the bike from its big V-twin instead of wrapping it in a full cradle frame, and gave the engine a baked black finish that made it the visual center of the machine. The other detail everyone remembers is the oversized 150 mph speedometer standing up in front of the rider like a station clock, a confident statement in an era when that number seemed absurd for a road bike. It is a lesson in letting the structure be the styling, which designers from Britten onward would take further.

The most persuasive argument that good design is about people rather than spectacle. Launched in 1958, the Super Cub put a small engine under a step-through frame with a broad front shield, so anyone could climb on in ordinary clothes and ride to work or make deliveries. Honda has kept the same basic design concept ever since, and in 2014 its shape became the first vehicle design to win a three-dimensional trademark in Japan, because most people who see it recognize it as a Honda. Cumulative production passed 100 million in October 2017. No other motorcycle on this list has touched as many lives.

If you picture a "classic British motorcycle," you are probably picturing a Bonneville. The T120, a performance version of Triumph's 650cc Tiger twin unveiled at Earls Court in November 1958, took its name from Johnny Allen's speed record runs on the Utah salt flats. The first version wore heavy valanced fenders and a headlamp nacelle that American buyers disliked, and the slimmer later bikes are the ones that became the template. That shape proved durable enough that Triumph's modern Hinckley Bonnevilles were modeled on the 1967 machine, which makes this the reference point for anyone weighing a retro twin today.

Honda Dream CB750 Four, 1969 Honda's brief was that a four-cylinder engine with four mufflers should be the basis of the design, borrowing the look of its Grand Prix racers, and that row of pipes became the signature of the machine. The big front disc brake drew crowds at the Tokyo Motor Show as much as the engine did, and Honda bills it as the first motorcycle to offer disc brakes. It is the least exotic shape here and arguably the most imitated: the upright, across-the-frame four with a pipe for each cylinder became the look of the big Japanese motorcycle for years afterward.

The bike that turned a tall touring V-twin into a long, low sports machine, and the clearest example here of a single packaging decision changing a whole silhouette. Lino Tonti moved the generator off the top of the engine, which let him run a lower backbone of straight, triangulated tubes and tuck the transverse V-twin down into the frame. The first batch for Moto Guzzi's 50th anniversary year, 1971, was built to meet production-racing rules, and those bikes are known as Telaio Rosso for their red chrome-moly frames. They are the collector's choice, but the shape itself is the lesson, and any early V7 Sport shows it.

Hans Muth's R 90 S, built from late 1973 to 1976, showed that a sober touring brand could look fast. Its small cockpit fairing on the handlebars came fitted as standard, and the bike is widely credited as the first production motorcycle sold with a factory fairing. The smoky silver paint of the early bikes gave it a look no other boxer had; Daytona Orange joined it from 1975. It belongs here because it made the fairing part of a factory sport bike's identity, and because Muth later co-founded Target Design, the studio behind the Suzuki Katana. A small fairing and a paint scheme did a great deal to change how BMW motorcycles were seen.

The tall adventure bikes in showrooms today owe a great deal to this one. In 1980 BMW put its 800cc boxer twin into a large-capacity off-road machine, and the name says the brief: Gelände and Straße, off-road and street. The design highlight is the Monolever, a single-sided rear swingarm that carried the drive shaft and simplified maintenance. Its reputation grew through long-distance tours and the Paris-Dakar Rally, and BMW still builds GS boxers today in the R 1300 GS. It looks plain beside an Italian sport bike, and that honesty is the point.

Suzuki GSX1100S Katana, 1981 Suzuki hired Target Design, a studio formed by former BMW designers Hans Muth, Hans-Georg Kasten and Jan Fellstrom, to restyle its big four, and the 1100cc prototype shown in Cologne in September 1980 went into production within months. Park it beside the rounded Japanese fours of its day and the difference is startling: a sharp, folded tank and seat, and a headlight fixed to the frame rather than turning with the bars. It proved a big Japanese four could carry a designer's signature, and Suzuki thought enough of the shape to revive the Katana name on a new model decades later.

John Britten's V1000, built in Christchurch, New Zealand, is what happens when one person questions every convention at once. It has no frame: the engine is a fully stressed unit that everything else bolts to, and carbon fiber and Kevlar keep the wheels and bodywork light. The bright, sculptural bodywork makes the engineering impossible to miss. Only ten were built, so almost nobody will ride one, and that is the honest caveat. Its influence comes from the ideas rather than the numbers, and New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, displays one as a contemporary classic of motorcycle design. If you want to see one, that is the place to go.

Ducati Monster, first shown as a prototype at the 1992 Cologne show Miguel Galluzzi's idea fits in one line: all you need is a saddle, tank, engine, two wheels and handlebars. Ducati wanted development costs kept down, so he drew on parts it already had, including the air-cooled 900SS engine and a trellis frame derived from its 851 and 888 superbikes, and let the muscular tank and exposed engine do the talking. That stripped-down formula became the model for the naked bikes that followed, and the Monster went on to sell more than 250,000 units, becoming Ducati's most popular model. It is the best example here of a tight budget forcing a better design.

The sport bike that every sport bike of the next decade was measured against. Massimo Tamburini's 916, first shown at the Italian motorcycle show in October 1993, packed its twin exhausts under the tail, gave it a single-sided swingarm that left the rear wheel looking as if it floated, and framed the nose with a pair of slim headlights. Not every idea was new. Pierre Terblanche, later Ducati's design chief, has said the under-seat exhausts came from Honda's NR750, and the swingarm began as a reverse-engineered Honda RC30 part, which makes it a useful lesson in how borrowed ideas become iconic when they are composed well. It also won the World Superbike title in four seasons, so the beauty was not just for show.

MV Agusta F4 750 Serie Oro, unveiled at the Milan show in September 1997 Tamburini's follow-up to the 916, drawn at the Cagiva Research Centre in San Marino, relaunched the MV Agusta name with a four-cylinder bike that treated every component as jewelry. The signature is the exhaust: four pipes stacked under the tail, which Tamburini said looked like organ pipes, fed by a system he designed for the sound as much as the power. Under the skin it used a radial four-valve layout in each cylinder. The limited run of 300 Serie Oro bikes went to pre-orders, and the F4 appeared in the Guggenheim's Art of the Motorcycle exhibition in 1998. It is the most ornate machine here, and it wears that well.