Highside/Lowside - A Motorcycle Podcast Mar 6, 2026

S11E09: What If Motorcycles Were Banned? A trip back in time to explore the future

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Term

high side

A high side is when a motorcycle slips and then suddenly grips again, throwing the rider off the bike. It can be very dangerous because it happens quickly and with a lot of force.

Brand

Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce is a famous company that makes very fancy cars and also powerful engines for airplanes and boats.

Term

E-V-T-O-L

E-V-T-O-L means small electric flying machines that can go straight up and down like a helicopter. They are a new kind of aircraft that might be easier and quieter to use.

Car

The Kia EV4 is a car that runs only on electricity instead of gas, which helps reduce pollution. It has lots of modern gadgets and is part of a new wave of electric cars. People talk about it when discussing new, cleaner cars.

Brand

Harley

Harley-Davidson is a famous company that makes motorcycles, especially known for their loud and powerful bikes.

Term

ABS

ABS is a safety system in vehicles that stops the wheels from freezing when you brake hard, so you can still steer and avoid accidents.

Concept

sport bikes

Sport bikes are motorcycles built to go fast and handle well, often used for racing or quick riding.

Concept

adventure bikes

Adventure bikes are motorcycles that you can ride on streets and rough trails, made tough for different kinds of roads.

Term

American V-twin

An American V-twin is a kind of motorcycle engine with two parts that make power, shaped like a V. It's popular in American motorcycles.

Term

American flat track

American flat track is a kind of motorcycle race on dirt tracks where riders slide their bikes around corners. Harley-Davidson motorcycles often race in this style.

Term

supercharged

Supercharged means the bike's engine has a special part that pushes more air inside to make it stronger and faster.

Term

touring models

Touring motorcycles are made for going on long rides. They have comfy seats and space to carry things, so the rider can travel far without getting tired.

Term

cruiser

A cruiser is a type of motorcycle made for easy and comfortable riding. It usually has a low seat and a relaxed way to sit while riding.

Term

cafe racer

A cafe racer is a type of motorcycle that looks simple and fast, designed to be quick and easy to ride.

Brand

Buell

Buell was a company that made faster, sportier motorcycles and worked with Harley Davidson in the 1990s.

Term

economy of scale

Making lots of something usually makes it cheaper to produce each one, which is called economy of scale.

Brand

General Motors

General Motors is a big company that makes many cars and trucks. They used to make cars under names like Pontiac and Oldsmobile but stopped making those.

Brand

Pontiac

Pontiac was a car brand that made sporty cars. It stopped making cars in 2010.

Concept

conglomerate

A conglomerate is a big company that owns many smaller companies all together.

Brand

KTM

KTM is a company that makes motorcycles and some sports cars. They are famous for their dirt bikes and have also worked on cars.

Brand

BMW

BMW is a company that makes cars and motorcycles. They are known for making fast and fancy vehicles.

Concept

restomod

A restomod is when an old car is fixed up and given new parts like better brakes and engines so it works like a new car but still looks old.

Car

Volkswagen Beatles

The Volkswagen Beetle is a small, round car that lots of people recognize because it’s been around for a long time. It’s known for being simple and easy to drive, and many people have fond memories of it. It’s often talked about when remembering classic cars.

Concept

crumple zone

A crumple zone is a part of a car that is made to bend and crush in a crash so it can protect the people inside by making the crash less strong.

Car

Dodge Road Runner

The Dodge Road Runner is a strong and fast car made a long time ago that many people liked because it was simple and powerful. It was built to go fast without extra fancy stuff. People talk about it when they remember old muscle cars.

Car

Toyota Prius

The Toyota Prius is a car that uses both gas and electricity to help save fuel and pollute less. It’s famous for being good for the environment and saving money on gas. People talk about it when discussing cleaner and greener cars.

Car

Toyota A90

The Toyota Supra is a fast and sporty car that many people love because it looks cool and goes really fast. It’s famous for being fun to drive and easy to make even faster. People talk about it when they want to discuss exciting cars.

LIVE

Welcome, welcome everybody to high side, low side.

My name is Zach.

I'm joined as always by my buddy, Spurge.

And on today's program,

we're talking about alternate motorcycle timelines.

What if Germany had won the war?

What if Boeing made motorcycles?

What if Harley-Davidson was a completely different company?

Plus airbag data for my accident in Spain

we're circling back to that.

And did you know that flippable tire technology does exist?

All that and much, much more everybody

after a quick word from our sponsor, Motul.

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And when you're over there on RevZilla.com

just keep in mind that every time you make a purchase

with a RevZilla, a little bit of that money

goes back into funding the programs that you enjoy.

Whether it's Zach and I sitting here talking with you

on high side, low side, or the shenanigans

that people get into when you're out riding

for a CTXP episode, or maybe you just appreciate

the gear reviews and the product information.

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So keep that in mind next time you need to make a purchase

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Welcome again, everybody.

High side, low side, we're off on another journey.

Just the two of us here today, Spurge, no guest

but still plenty of stuff to say, I'm sure.

And we are gonna start, we don't like to sprint off

into a high side, low side episode without stretching out

a little bit, warming up.

And this time the warmup is near and dear to my heart,

Spurge, Joe.

So at the time of recording, we are coming hot off

a weekend of Supercross kicking off out in Anaheim.

And the big news after the weekend was Justin Barsha,

who's racing for Ducati this year,

had a pretty gnarly crash where he and Malcolm Smith collided

and- Malcolm Stewart.

I'm sorry, Malcolm Stewart.

Yeah.

Malcolm Smith R.I.P.

It's true, it's true.

That's sort of my mind is all over the place.

We're here in some deep history in today's episode.

But yes, and was wearing an Alpine Stars Tech Air Mx

was rushed off to the hospital.

And while he's beat up and bruised,

he seems to have walked away relatively on skates

at this time.

And we were talking with Alpine Stars about this,

but it got us thinking about the fact that

as this technology continues to evolve,

one of the interesting pieces of this is that you do get

more information about the crash and how it happened

and all that.

And Zach, you were wearing an Alpine Stars Tech Air 7

I believe during your crash.

You have since received some data from Alpine Stars.

Yes, yes.

And so this segue about Justin Barsha and his crash

is the perfect little kind of jaunt into

what have you learned that you might not have known otherwise

about your crash and help the audience understand that?

Yes, I think we promised or suggested that we would follow

up after the episode about my crash about

if and when we got Alpine Stars Tech Air data, we did.

And yeah, it's pretty interesting.

I should say right out of the gate here

that one of the reasons that I am fortunate

to call riding motorcycles my job

is that I get to have access to Alpine Stars Tech Air data.

Not everyone can do this, in other words, Spurge, yet anyway.

You can't just send in your airbag after a crash

and say like, hey, Alpine Stars,

give me that one of those nifty mark, mark as printouts

where you show me what the maximum G load was

and how long I tumbled for and blah, blah, blah.

But because we work at RevZilla

and I was working when I crashed,

I was able to have access to that information,

which is kind of cool.

And yeah, so I got a readout of what the accelerometers said

inside the Tech Air system.

And I wrote an article about it.

It's on the Common Tread website

where I sort of, I analyzed some of the onboard video,

which is a part of the article as well

and showed the airbag data

and sort of cross-referenced those things

along with the damage to my gear, to my helmet,

to my leathers, to my gloves, to my boots,

and try and figure out exactly how I hit the ground

and why my injuries happened

and other reasons to be grateful.

And as a little nugget,

I pulled some airbag data from a Mark Marquez crash

of which there is video on YouTube,

embedded that in the article as well,

so you can sort of see.

It was interesting for me,

perhaps more than anyone else,

to sort of visualize what the crash looked like.

It was comparable data from a Mark Marquez crash

of his maximum impact with the ground

and how long he tumbled after he crashed.

And in my mind, it was sort of like,

I don't really know what any of that looked like

because we don't have it on video.

I would say for the audience,

there was no actual video of your crash, correct?

No, no, no trackside video.

There was an onboard of the bike,

which we can analyze and we can learn some stuff

from the way the bike tumbled,

but I didn't actually see what happened to me and my body,

which no offense to KTM was what I was most concerned with.

So, I mean, outside of folks leaving the podcast

and go reading the article,

what was your biggest takeaway

from taking a look at the data?

What did you learn?

What was your number one piece of information?

Hmm, good question.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I think, I guess part of it is when I saw,

like my data chart says the section

where I quote unquote tumbled on the track,

like, you know, I was airborne for a while

and I hit the ground and then the time

from when I hit the ground to when I ended up

still in the gravel, gravel trap was, let's see,

3.45 seconds.

So, three and a half seconds of tumbling

and you sort of like, I don't know.

It doesn't seem like that long.

Three and a half seconds isn't that long.

Did it feel like longer to you in the moment?

Well, I don't remember it.

So, that's another reason

that analyzing this data was interesting

because I hit my head hard enough

that I don't really remember tumbling at all.

But then the Mark Marquez Grash,

I believe he tumbled for 3.55 seconds

or 3.58 seconds or something, whatever,

within a few hundredths of a second of my tumbling total.

In other words, from the time that he hit the ground

to when he came to a stop was a similar amount

of, you know, sliding and tumbling down the track.

And when I watch the video of him doing it,

I'm like, that looks like it sucks.

And so, like, it looks like a long time, you know,

it looks like he slid and tumbled for a long time.

You're sort of like, oh, okay, well,

that changes your perspective a little bit

on what you, you know, how I felt about it.

Like, you know, part of me was like,

I broke my ankle and I cracked a bone in my neck.

But like, am I just a wuss?

Or should I feel like, you know,

do I get to feel tough after having survived this, you know?

And then watching his crash,

which had a similar maximum load impact

from the airbag system

and also a similar amount of tumbling.

Obviously, every crash is different

for loads and loads of reasons,

but it was a little bit of an illustration for me.

And I was kind of like, wow,

that was like, that was a longer crash

than I thought it was.

And so forgive me if you answered this

and I just missed it.

Did Alpine Stars provide you that specific Marquez crash

because the data was similar to yours?

No, I looked it up, you did, okay.

Because I was curious, right?

You know, like, I think anyone would say like,

oh, you know, I know that I crashed at approximately

this speed, you know, whatever.

I had an onboard camera on my bike

and like I crashed in third gear at 65 miles an hour.

And so I don't know, like in the bike slid

for this X amount of time.

And so like, I guess that's,

I'm just like curious what that looks like.

What does that even look like?

You know, like I don't really know

what a 65 mile an hour high side looks like,

but you can, because we live in the edge of the internet

and YouTube and whatever, you can look it up

and be like, what does it look like

when someone high sides at 65 or 70 miles an hour?

Well, okay, cool.

Now I can watch that and I don't know.

Like I said, perhaps other people

won't be quite as interested in it as I am,

but analyzing all the data that I had

and combining it with things that I knew or inferred

was super interesting to digest it all.

And I don't know if it really provides

any kind of closure for me at all,

but it was also made me,

I don't know if it made me feel better.

It was, I wasn't expecting to find

that Mark has crash data where he hurt himself

and I hurt myself and I felt like, well,

at least if a once in a generation rider

that's made out of pure muscle and talent

gets hurt when he crashes at that approximate speed

or whatever, then like, maybe I don't feel so bad

having a flabby dad bot that rides a desk for a living.

You know what I mean?

That's all.

Well, I think there's a lot of outside benefits

with the airbag technology that we're seeing

from Alpine Stars specifically

because there are accelerometers,

there are gyroscopes, they're collecting this data.

And like Zach said, not all of this data

is accessible to the average consumer,

but within the Alpine Stars app,

you can track things like maximum speed

and lean angles and other pieces of information.

So it's tracking-

Yeah, it's much more than just safety technology.

There's a lot of just overall technology

that goes into this stuff.

And if you wanna learn more about it,

we have plenty of articles on common tread.

We've got videos breaking the technology down.

And there's no shortage of, you know,

rabbit holes you can jump into with trying to figure it out.

Agreed, agreed.

Yeah, hopefully if you have time to check out that article,

you'll get a kick out of it.

But, Sparjo, moving on from my crash data

and on to this episode.

This is a listener suggestion that we're not dying today.

Is a listener suggestion from a long-time listener named Jay.

Long-time listener Jay, self-described quote unquote,

long-time listener, sent us a note that said,

I would like to pitch an episode involving motorcycles,

alternate timelines, excuse me.

Can the crew dive into this world of hypotheticals?

I think it would be a fun episode.

So what this means basically is,

as we talked about briefly in the intro,

what if this happened, what if that happened?

What if this company did that?

What if that country won the war?

What if this company went out of business?

And we tuned it over in a production meeting

with our fearless leader, Chase,

and came up with a few topics to cover here.

And I think we're going to have a fun conversation.

So I'll let you kick it off, Sparjo.

Yes, so what we did was we had Chase reach out

to other members of the team,

and they all proposed what they would like to hear

chewed over, and the first one actually comes in

from our editor, Matt, and editor Matt says,

what if American heavy industry companies

made the variety of products

that Japanese industrial countries do?

So for example, like Kawasaki doesn't just make motorcycles,

it's a heavy industries company.

They make all kinds of crazy stuff.

You know, Honda's launching rockets

and running an automotive wing.

And so what we did was we took,

Matt gave us a whole slew of suggestions of like,

what if Ford did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, the one that we liked was,

would you ride a Boeing motorcycle in 1975?

What if Boeing made motorcycles in 2025?

And we thought this was pretty cool

to think about the aeronautical space

and the automotive space.

And so, Zach, who did you reach out to

to get their take on this?

Because that's the other point too,

is that we actually reached out to other people

in the industry to help us answer these questions.

Yes, we did.

So each of these answers will have Sparjo and I,

you know, chewing the fat on what we think happened,

but we reached out to someone else in our network

of quote, unquote, motorcycle experts

to give us their take,

so that we're not the only ones in the room here.

And so you'll see some names you recognize

as we move along here.

I reached out to my former boss

at Motorcyclist Magazine, Mr. Mark Cook,

who now works in the general aviation publishing industry,

has done and did for a while before riding motorcycles.

He's pretty well versed in the world of aviation.

And so we asked him what his take on Boeing.

He's not an industrial, you know,

an American industrial economic historian

or anything like that.

He just sort of knows a bit about airplanes.

And he gave us some interesting stuff to chew over.

And I guess, I'm not sure where to start exactly,

but I thought it was interesting

that our buddy Mark's take on this

was that it was not, to me,

like when I saw this question asked by editor Matt,

he was sort of like,

what if Boeing had gotten into riding motorcycles?

And I was sort of like, yeah, I don't know.

Seems like Boeing would have

a lots of strength in engineering.

They'd have lots of footholds in, I don't know,

material design and so on and so forth.

And like, you know, getting into motorcycles at some point

wouldn't be that big a stretch, you know?

But interestingly, especially in the modern era,

especially since, I guess, the 70s

or certainly since the jet age,

Mark's take was sort of like,

aviation at the scale that Boeing operates on

and motorcycling are just so different

that there wouldn't be enough crossover

for anything exciting to have ever come

out of that hypothetical situation.

Is that what you read into it also?

Yeah, he talks about, you know,

the FAA would have lots of regulations

before, never before tried technology.

He talked about, you know, one of the ways

that Boeing saw success was through, you know,

underpinned government military contracts, right?

So like a lot of what they were able to develop

was done because they were, you know,

creating planes for military use first

that then transitioned over into consumer use, right?

That was kind of like how I heard him think about this.

He also pointed out that he had a line

in his response to us that I liked where he said,

virtually every company that has come into aviation

intending to revolutionize it or to prove

that the old guard was out of touch

or to prove that they were smarter has failed.

And he points out that all jets look the same,

all general aviation planes look the same.

It's because the design has been sorted out

and that's where it's all settled

and that's kind of the end of it.

He did point out that there are disruptors

in the like vertical takeoff and landing space

and, you know, this sort of like gap

between, I don't know, recreational drone aircraft

and things that can carry people

and it's sort of being bridged in a way

that's a little spooky sometimes.

Anyway, there's lots of cool stuff happening

in the aviation world, not that that doesn't happen,

but on a grand scale and for like a big business

trying to make a big impact in another industry,

he just, it sounded like his viewpoint was that

it was too narrow a silo to escape, basically,

which I thought was kind of interesting.

Mark, but I know that you have an alternate take here,

Sparge.

Mark, I am a huge fan of your work.

I've gotten to work with Mark on a few projects.

I like Mark.

I'm disappointed, Mark.

Your imagination wasn't broad on this.

So let's put the history teacher cap on here

Mr. Dunbar and tell us, Mr. Dunbar,

tell us all about Boeing.

Boeing's first jet engine came around in the 50s.

It was a turbojet for their 707s.

You know who made and produced one of the engines?

Like is Boeing sourced outside producers for their engines?

You know who made one of those engines, Zach?

Harley-Davidson.

No, okay, Rolls-Royce, okay?

So Rolls-Royce is an automotive company,

but they're also making aeronautical engines.

You know what Rolls-Royce also produced a turbo for?

A jet turbine engine?

Oh, the Y2K motorcycle.

The MTT, the marine turbine engines.

Yes.

Yeah, the turbine engines from the early 2000s

were powered by a Rolls-Royce 250 C18 gas turbine engine.

This is the crazy, the wacky,

perhaps we could show it on screen at some point,

the wacky turbine jet-powered motorcycle

that I think Jay Leno famously had one of

and wrote around a little bit, wacky motorcycle.

But your point is that Rolls-Royce,

like a supplier for Boeing and for motorcycles.

Is that what you're saying here?

Yeah, and so what I'm trying to figure out here

is that like, you know, I didn't, I'm not,

you know, I'm not, you know, big into the world of aviation,

but I did some research here,

and like in the world of seven degrees of Kevin Bacon,

like it only took, you know, two lines

to connect these dots together.

We took two slices of bacon. Exactly.

To get done. Right.

I like bacon, so I'm gonna keep us on track though,

because bacon can easily derail us.

But my point being is that like, okay,

if Boeing were a bit more imaginative in like,

hey, we're sticking these engines on things that fly

and we are, you know, you know, building planes,

why not think about this

from a more consumer-facing standpoint?

Maybe to Mark's point, from a scale of economies,

that didn't make sense.

But then let's fast forward

and let's think about this outside of jets,

you know, to Mark's additional point of like,

there is some experimenting happening right now.

There was an article that was produced

by Dustin Whelan, literally today,

at the time of recording.

It's a brand new article, I probably haven't even seen it yet.

I know.

Dude, I've been, I'm hopped up on Red Bull,

I've been working since like 6 a.m. this morning.

So Dustin released an article called

The Motorcycles of CES 2026,

Solid State Batteries and Other Flying Bikes.

So flying, flying personal aircraft is big right now.

I was actually listening to an investment podcast

a few days ago where they were talking about,

you know, some of these companies

that are trying to get capital to create

aircraft that could potentially replace helicopters.

And what Dustin gets into in his article is E-V-T-O-L,

which is electronic vertical takeoff and landing.

These are small aircraft that can take off vertically,

fly and then vertically land.

So think like a helicopter,

but a little bit more looks like a flying motorcycle.

Now, do I think that this is gonna take off

necessarily from an individual case

being that the company LEO is recommending

a base price of $100,000 for their flying motorcycle thingy?

No, I don't think this is gonna be a fly by night thing.

But to imagine a world where this doesn't become

something that we see more of in the next, you know,

10 or 15 years with the rapid success of technology,

I'm just disappointed there's not more of an imagination

for Mark about like where Boeing's gonna play here.

In his defense, a jet powered motorcycle is,

I think has been proven at this point

to be not a very good idea.

And not one that had mass appeal from financial standpoint

or practical standpoint.

You don't want 420 horsepower underneath you

in a jet engine, come on.

No, I mean, with a red line of 52,000 RPM.

Right, right, right, right, yeah.

Yeah, I think in Mark's defense,

that's exactly the kind of crap

that Boeing wanted to avoid

in getting into motorcycle industry.

But I did also, you bring up an interesting point

that was the whole VTOL space,

you know, personal VTOL or EVTOL aircraft,

which to be clear, I don't know a lot about,

so I'm not gonna pretend I do.

But they're very sophisticated electronically, right?

It was like, was it 15 years ago,

or so I'm totally making this up,

that we started seeing those little recreational drones

that you could fly around your living room

that had automatic, you know,

every drone shot that you see on the news

or on a YouTube video or whatever

is shot out from a DJI

or some sort of recreational drone that you can get.

And the way those drones fly

is you can control when they go up or down

or left or right or sideways,

but they self-balance, right?

So self-balancing drone technology

has been around in the recreational,

especially in the camera space for a while now, right?

Yeah.

Or another one, a decade and a half anyway,

it's sort of, I feel like 15 years ago

is where I remember seeing those for sale, cheap,

and all like on little kids playing with them

at Christmas and stuff like that.

Mark made an interesting point,

which is that aircraft in the space

that Boeing plays in anyway,

has been pretty old school for a long time.

And he pointed out that the 787 Dreamliner

that Boeing produced, I don't remember when that came out,

but is state of the art in many, many ways.

And there's a lot of electronics involved

in large aircraft at this point,

but he had a line in his note to us

that I thought was kind of interesting.

Did I save it?

Maybe I didn't.

Anyway, it was basically something like,

I don't see the amount of electronics

that are in a Ducati Pentagon EV4

in general aviation anytime soon.

Now, general aviation is different

than military contracts with Boeing

or airliners that carry hundreds of people across oceans.

But it's an interesting thing to consider

that while they've produced their first jet

in what was it, the 50s or something?

And jet travel, jet liners have become

such a ubiquitous part of life in our world

that it's not really,

it's still based on pretty simple principles

of thrust and lift.

And it's not about super complex

electronic systems that control pitch and yaw

and blah, blah, blah until recently.

And so I thought that was an interesting point to make

that or until relatively recently.

And I think that's an interesting point to make

in the context of like, why didn't,

it seems like a company like that would be

up to their elbows in technology

and would be able to keep up with motorcycling so easily.

But because of whatever it is he mentions,

financial arms, he mentions government regulations,

whatever it is, they've been steered

in two really different directions

that is motorcycling and aircraft.

Well, one of the things that they talked about,

one of the things that Mark made the point on was,

obviously the military application of their aircraft

and how that helped.

You're looking, we're living in a world where like,

at the time of recording a few days ago,

the United States government is talking about,

$500 million contracts for increased drone technology

research and purchasing, right?

So these companies that are producing these drones

are now finding military applications.

And to the point of, when I was listening

to the financial podcast around some

of these individual electronic flying personal aircraft,

one of the things that they talked about was,

it's really going to be,

how do you figure out an application

that makes sense financially?

And that gets back to Mark's point about Boeing.

It's probably not gonna be flying motorcycles.

It would most likely be something

that would be a more practical transportation, right?

Like when we're talking about the EVTOLs,

like how do you turn that into something

that has a more widespread application?

So much add, that's a good segue Chase,

Spurgeon because I think while producer Chase,

and perhaps you, dear listener,

are hoping that we will move on soon,

I would like to stay on the topic just a bit longer.

Let's go back in time before the 50s.

This is when I sort of like,

when my mind, to start talking about Boeing

and Boeing making motorcycles,

where I went was like pre-jet,

because if you've ever read a Kevin Cameron article

in Cycle World, yeah, propeller, gas powered,

internal combustion airplanes, right?

Well, I guess is turbine internal combustion?

That doesn't matter.

Let's not get, let's get bogged down

in the things that Zach doesn't know.

But if you go back before jet engines, right?

In aircraft, Boeing has been around since the World War I,

I think, I don't know, whatever, 19 teens

or something like that, more than 100 years.

And famously produced lots of really crucial aircraft

in World War II.

If you've ever read a Kevin Cameron article in Cycle World,

he talks a lot about World War II aviation

because they learned a lot.

They, the aviation industry learned a lot

about internal combustion in that time

because there's a big crossover

between industrial advancements and military spending,

as we'll talk about later in this program as well.

But that to me was the time for Boeing to make a motorcycle.

Post World War II, all of the sort of like,

I don't know, sort of chest thumping.

We saved the world energy around American industry

and beloved companies that created these aircraft

that shuttle troops around and whatever.

And maybe you're the history teacher,

maybe I'm missing something really huge here,

but having learned so much about internal combustion

and what the dynamics inside an engine mean

for the performance of the engine and the vehicle,

it seems like Boeing was in a place then

to enter the motorcycling space with some,

I don't know, three-cylinder air-cooled thing

that take on Indian and Harley and wouldn't that be,

it'd be an American company.

You could really, you could sink your teeth into that

as a 1950s American.

Like, yeah, I'm gonna buy a Boeing motorcycle.

It's got that, you know, it makes more horsepower

than that Harley-Davidson or Indian.

I'm gonna ride that down to the malt shop

with my main squeeze.

Well, I just finished reading Peter Egan's new book

of which he talks about flight.

And he was somebody else that I considered reaching out to

for this question.

But he and his wife flew around the country on a Piper Cub.

And I believe that was a flat four engine or it was a...

Yeah, that sounds right.

Yeah, so, but like, you know, produce, you know,

65 horsepower, you know, upgrades up to 85 horsepower.

Like, so like, it's an engine where you could imagine it

potentially, you know, either powering a small car

or a motorcycle, you know, in addition to a plane.

So I do agree that like, as the American mankind

manufacturers were probably a little bit more,

I don't want to say singular because there were, you know,

two main American manufacturers that really kind of came out

with Indian and Harley as well as some smaller knockoffs,

you know, or some smaller brands that maybe didn't succeed

and didn't ultimately last.

Like it is interesting that at that time,

you didn't see, you know, more of the aeronautical space

kind of dabbling in both, you know, the Piper Cub was produced,

you know, down the road for me here in Pennsylvania.

And, you know, it's one of those ones where we actually have

the Dirty Dabbers motorcycle dual sport.

We all go up and camp out in the old factory landing grounds

of where the Piper Cub was produced.

Interesting.

Fun fact, yeah.

That is a fun fact.

Well, I think that if you know anything about motorcycles

or airplanes or history, you will probably be thinking

that we have left a lot of gaps in this conversation

and there are many more hypotheticals

that could be put forth.

If you have one that you want to share with us,

send us an email to highsideloveside.revzilla.com.

We would love to hear from you.

I think we, you know, we could probably make a whole podcast

out of just that one topic, Spurge,

but we'd better move on, don't you think?

Yes, because we've got more topics

that are interesting and exciting.

This one actually came in.

This was one of the topics that longtime listener Jay

proposed to us.

And he said, what if Harley Davidson evolved

with the industry and made more modern bikes?

I would like to start off by saying this was Jay's question.

This is as Jay asked it.

This is not anything that Zach and I took liberty with.

Right, so if you're a Harley hater,

you're going to be thinking, yeah, good question, Jay.

Why do they make bikes from 1975 still?

Why don't, or 1965, why don't they make new bikes,

modern bikes that have new engines,

modern engines like everyone else does?

Is that fair?

Zach, is that fair?

Hang on, hang on, I'm not done.

If you're a Harley lover, you'll be thinking,

whoa, whoa, whoa, Harley has advanced, they have evolved.

They have moved forward with all sorts of technology

and precision cooling and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

and ABS and boom, exclamation point boxes.

But I think that the question here is,

to distill it a little bit, Spurge,

what if Harley-Davidson didn't lean so heavily

into heritage and history

and instead just tried to kind of always

keep in lockstep with the industry moving forward

with whether it was sport bikes that were introduced

by Japanese companies in the 80s

or adventure bikes as they came to popular,

stuff like that.

Like why wasn't there more of that?

Which I think is objectively a fair question.

Yeah, so who did we ask for their opinion?

We went to Mr. Patrick Garvin.

Patrick Garvin is our in-house Harley expert

and American V-twin expert, I suppose,

American flat track expert as well.

But the thing about Patrick Garvin that I like so much

is that he loves Harley-Davidson's,

owns them, works on them, loves them,

but he does not drink all of the Kool-Aid, you know?

He doesn't have blinders on.

Like he also likes a supercharged Kawasaki ZX-10

now and again, you know what I mean?

He dabbles in everything.

He doesn't only own Harley-Davidson's,

he owns a slew of different bikes.

He's got dirt bikes, he's got mini bikes,

he's got Japanese bikes, whatever.

So I like that about him.

And let's see, I guess Garvin had a couple of good points

when we put this question to him

of like why hasn't Harley evolved differently?

And I think the big takeaway for me, what he said, Spurge,

was Garvin said, quote,

I think Harley not evolving with the standard motorcycle,

quote, culture is the reason they are so successful.

And I think that that's something

that we have to address here, right?

Is that Harley has been this heritage brand

and has really like put a stake in the ground

as owning that space

and hasn't let a lot of things derail them.

And I think that's a good reason to stay the course, right?

Is that it's working.

Well, he also goes on to talk,

he gives us some perspective, right?

So, you know, he says, you know, it's no secret

that Harley-Davidson sells bikes based on a lifestyle,

not on a spec sheet, for example.

Also a good point.

He defends the M8 platform,

which is much more technologically advanced

than previous iterations.

I mean, hell, he didn't even bring up the fact

that the Revolution Max 1250 that's used in the Pan America

and the Sportster is an insanely advanced thing.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, the Vowel Adjustments ever.

Yeah, like it revolutionized.

I mean, I can't think of another manufacturer

that's not, you don't have to adjust the valves, you know?

So then he goes on to say for perspective,

Harley-Davidson created the V-Rod,

which sold roughly 150,000 units

over the life of the model from 2002 to 2017.

Right, so 150,000 models in 15 years.

To put that in perspective, in 2024,

Harley-Davidson sold 85,000 touring models in one year.

Right, yeah, that's a, I mean, historically,

I remember I think it was 2000, 2010, 12, 15,

somewhere in that range, you know,

Harley would sell 50,000 of one model, right?

Like of a street glide, they'd sell 50,000 of those.

Think about it.

Yeah, and I mean, those kind of numbers

are staggering and it is one of the reasons

I think it's important to point out

why Harley-Davidson has had trouble branching out,

whether it's with the V-Rod or the Pan America,

I won't say the Pan America probably has struggled

to create the Pan America or call it a success,

but like, or the XR 1200 famously,

it's like they make that bike,

some, you know, if 10 or 15,000 people love that bike,

for any other brand, that's a success, right?

Like there have been years where BMW has sold

12 or 15,000 flagship GSs.

That's great for, in the United States, that is.

That's great for BMW.

They can call that a success.

If Harley-Davidson sells 10,000 of a model,

it's not that great.

And that is sort of like, it's a, yeah,

it's sort of, it's a tax of the success of the company

that they can't, or that makes less sense

to do that kind of thing.

Do you remember, do you have the stats in front of you?

I know you wrote an article about Honda.

You did a review of the Shadow 750.

Oh yeah.

And so Zach, Zach and I were talking in pre-pro.

Zach did a review of the Honda Shadow 750.

And I bring this up in his example.

So in the 80s and into the 90s,

you saw Japanese manufacturers

and we'll use Honda as the example here.

Branch out and create cruisers to go after the American rider.

And you know.

Because Harley was having,

the 70s were not famously good for Harley,

but Harley was a, it was a marquee brand.

They're having some success.

And so, when we think about Jay's question,

what if Harley-Davidson evolved with the industry

and made more modern bikes?

Look at a company like Honda,

who has all different types of makes and models

and motorcycles.

And that's kind of, you know, their take

on how they're running their company.

Zach, what happened when Honda started making cruisers?

It went great.

They sold so many of them.

So I just found my article and the stats

that I had found when I did this, which let's see.

Compared to the V-twins that America was used to,

the Shadow was a technological tour de force.

Of course, the quote custom motorcycle scene

has always been about looks,

but evidently the Shadow had that covered too,

because bikes flew out of dealerships

and the legend grew immediately.

Honda sold more than 19,000 Shadow 750s

in the first year of sale, which I think was 83 maybe, 82, 83.

And by 1985, the cruisers are quote customs

in Honda's lineup accounted for nearly 80,000 units per year.

Which is not nothing.

Not nothing.

80, sales figures in the 80s

from motorcycle are a little different

than sales figures nowadays.

But the point is, there's a lot of bikes.

Yeah, and so I think this gets to the core

of Jay's question where you look at a brand like Honda

and they maybe took a different approach

to what a cruiser was.

And some people liked that and bought the bikes

and other people didn't like that.

And they kind of stuck with the traditional Harley-Davidson.

Now, the pivot here that I wanna make.

Oh, I wanna pivot.

You pivoting before I pivot?

Son of a pivot.

Do you want me to let you pivot?

No, no, you can pivot.

Go ahead.

I think the perception here

is that Harley-Davidson never tried this.

And that's wrong.

So Spurgeon puts on his history cap once again

and let me take you back in time to 1960.

In 1960, Harley partnered with Aramaki

an Italian manufacturer and they tried for over 15 years

throughout the 60s and 70s to bring in

smaller displacement dirt bikes and scooters.

And they tried to branch out through what became the AMF

years and ultimately it didn't work out.

People didn't buy the bikes.

Okay, so that's the first time.

Then, shortly after the Aramaki partnership ends,

Harley introduces the XLCR.

Okay, this is a bike produced from 1977 and 1979.

This is a cafe racer.

They're going after Ducati.

You know, they're producing something

that's a factory showroom cafe racing motorcycle

that you could buy and it does not work out.

People do not buy it and by roughly the end of the 70s,

it's gone.

You can't walk into a Harley dealership

and buy one in 1980.

Well, you presumably could buy a leftover

because they were still sitting on showroom floors.

So do you have any,

do you know what the sales figures were, Spurgeon?

No, I did not look that up.

But I don't know.

Sometimes you can't find that stuff.

I would assume it was, but not a lot.

Yeah, I mean, they might have sold 25,000 of them

whereas like some Italian or some boutique brand

would have been like, wow.

But I think it's also, you made a good point.

Like sales numbers in the 70s,

where you know, 70s and 80s,

we're selling a lot more motorcycles than we are today.

I'm loving your pivot and I don't want to derail it.

So continue pivoting.

Harley Davidson, then in the early 90s, partners with Buell,

they basically buy an ownership stake in Buell.

They're saying, we're going to build sport bikes.

Now to Jay's point,

they're putting sports engines in them,

but they're putting like hot,

hopped up sports engines in sport bikes

and they're putting, you know,

radial mounted rotors on these crazy American made sport bikes.

They did an adventure bike.

Like they were doing some interesting stuff

and no one was really buying it.

Not in volume, not enough to make it succeed,

but Harley kept that it.

They kept that it from 1993 to 2009

before finally they said, you know what?

We're going to cut our losses.

I don't have it on here because I failed to find this,

but Harley then also had an ownership stake in MV Augusta.

And Kajiva, right?

In the 2000s.

Before they sold that.

Then let's get forward to 2019.

Harley introduces Livewire, a fully electric motorcycle,

a relatively sporty, fully electric motorcycle.

I say relatively sporty.

It was not a sport bike, but it could haul the mail.

It could snap your neck back at a pretty aggressive pace

if you whack that throttle open.

That didn't even last that long.

They spun Livewire off into its own brand a few years later

in 2021, it's still going, you know,

and we're going to wait and see

what we get from Livewire this year.

And then in 2021, after they spun off Livewire,

they introduced the Pan America, an adventure bike,

revolutionary engine that we already talked about

with the 1250 revolutionary max.

A liquid cooled engine doesn't need to have the valves

adjusted, has variable valve timing.

You know, the bike lowered itself in a fully automatic

suspension to let you get on and off easier

for shorter riders.

Like the perception that Harley isn't trying this stuff

is wrong.

The problem is Harley tries this stuff

and it just doesn't work out at an economy of scale

that allows them to keep doing it

because that's not what Harley buyers want.

And for all of us sitting around screaming,

give us the Bronx, give us the Bronx.

Are you actually going out and spending $15,000

on an American made sport bike?

And, right, and more to that point,

even if 10 or 12 or 15,000 people put down money

and bought a Bronx, would that wouldn't,

would Harley not still the,

would they not be looking at a spreadsheet and think,

well, we sold freaking 38,000 street glides

and like they're cheaper to make

and we didn't have to make new tooling

and we just kind of like, I don't know, like why bother?

Right?

You'd have to ask that question.

And I think that's the thing that the sort of like,

it seems like Harley's branching out has always been

to some extent a victim of the success

of all of the sort of bread and butter heritage models.

Yeah.

So that was, so that was my pivot, Jay.

But yeah, I like your pivot.

Your pivot was the same as my pivot, Spurge,

except I had a slightly different take.

Okay.

My take was I wrote down the same things you did

when I did my research.

Aramaki in the 60s, Buell in the 90s,

MV Augustine Kajiva in the 2000s,

Livewire in the late 2000s.

My imagination went to, if we,

if we cast ourselves back to, I mean, specifically AMF years,

and you know, this isn't a Harley podcast

where I'm going to talk about AMF years to,

to too great an extent.

If Chase is a really good producer,

he will look up exactly which episode that was

that we talked about Harley blenders and the AMF years

and so on and so forth.

And I will circle back to that.

But for now, what I'm talking about is

this conglomerate of motorcycles

that you could see growing over the decades.

I think there's something there, right?

In the sort of like general motors,

you know, I don't know if general motors is a great example,

considering general motors, you know, killed off Pontiac

and killed off Osmobile and so on and so forth.

I'm still bitter about that.

But holding the grudge GM.

But I can imagine an alternate reality where Harley-Davidson

was this, you know, Harley-Davidson motorcycles were

what you imagine Harley-Davidson's to be centrally right now.

Street glides, road glides, you know, ultra limited,

top case touring bikes.

And then, you know, I guess your soft tails,

your heritage classic, that kind of thing.

And then within the Harley-Davidson bubble,

or maybe we would have called it AMF at this point,

you know, whatever from AMF,

you could also get an Aramaki.

And an Aramaki, you're like, oh, Aramakis are,

I don't know, imagine like a,

I don't know, some hybrid of like a,

well, I mean, imagine like an Aprilia, you know,

like that kind of thing.

Actually, you know, better yet, imagine a hybrid

between like a Japanese brand and like a KTM or something

like that.

So like their little dirt bikes,

their little scooters, their little stuff like that.

And then you got, oh, you could also get a Buell

under the AMF umbrella.

And in Buell, you can get a big V-Twin American superbike

if you want, but they also,

they also went down the road of creating a V-4.

And, you know, you can get an 1,100 CC V-4

with 220 horsepower and 11 levels of trash control

and blah, blah, blah.

It's basically a Panigale competitor, that kind of thing.

And then, you know, with the acquisition

of Envy, Gusta and Kijiva, we have this,

you can also get sort of like sleek and sexy liquid cooled

street bikes to compete with everything from Japan,

slightly more up spec and blah, blah, blah.

And so you'd have this like, then you'd have a,

and then electric bikes with live wire, whatever.

So then you theoretically have this really complete

motorcycle company, right?

With, yeah, with dirt bikes that are called Armakis

and sleek, cool little street fighters

that are called Envy, Gusta's or Kijiva's

or something we don't know.

And then, you know, big super bikes that are called Buells

and electric bikes that are called live wires.

And then the Harley Davidson models that we know today

as Harley Davidson's, but it was all part of this company.

That was where my mind went with this whole thing

is like a conglomerate in 2025 of all of these things

that Harley Davidson has experimented with and tried

to create a whole catalog of really,

and they'd be called different things.

They wouldn't all be called a KTM or all be called a BMW,

but they would be under the same corporate umbrella.

So as you're going down that pivot,

pivot, my mind went somewhere else.

And this is where I thought you were going to go

and you didn't, but that's okay.

And I know that we're going to want to move on.

Producer Chase is, you know, pinging us on the side.

If you want more information

about the Harley Davidson conversation

that Zach was talking to,

you can check out the American Blunders,

or the motorcycle industry blunders, American edition,

high side, low side, season four or season five, episode four.

But GM specifically, right?

One of the things-

Oh, you got, you're going to air some grievances about GM.

No, no, no, no, no.

Like I want us to think about this

because Harley gets flack from non-Harley owners about like,

oh, you're still just building big cruisers, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And they look very similar to the bikes you were building

in the 1970s or the 80s.

Or imagine, let's just pretend,

let's pretend that GM didn't kill off Pontiac.

And imagine that you could buy a GTO.

And maybe I'm going over the heads of our younger audience,

but like, you could get a 60s muscle car

that looked like a 60s muscle car,

but with a brand new drivetrain and brakes

and suspension that actually worked.

And like, it's this whole like Resto-Mod,

automotive side of things.

But like, imagine if that was being done from the factory.

So the cars were still boxy and square

and made of metal,

but they just had modern technology and airbags in them.

Like, people would,

there's a huge facet of the automotive buyers

that would love that, right?

And it's the same thing with Harley,

like GM's not doing that and people want them to.

And then you have Harley Davidson that's saying,

no, like you can buy a bike that kind of looks pretty similar

to the bike that you would have bought, you know,

right, three to four years ago.

1868 or 1978 or whatever.

And I mean, you've seen Triumph have success with this,

with their retro, with the modern classic line.

Like, I think, you know,

when you think about it from that alternate timeline,

you wonder why automotive isn't taking a page

out of Harley's playbook

and whether or not it would be more successful.

I love that you just went full pro Harley on this whole thing.

You just like, you ended up,

you ended up just waving the flag, the bar and shield.

I like it.

It's an alternate universe, Zach.

You never know what you're going to find

when you go down one of these wormholes, Betty.

That's true.

You found, you found a bizarro spurch.

Let's get at it, brother.

I think, I think you make a good point.

I think it's fair to call out that the perception

that Harley has never tried anything is wrong.

And I think it's fair to call out

that the technological advancements

within the motorcycling world do include Harley Davidson.

But at the same time,

we both very much understood Jay's question, right?

Like when he said,

how come Harley Davidson hasn't evolved with the industry?

You know what that, we know what he's asking.

Yeah, you get it.

Takes four fingers to pull the clutch in.

You shouldn't have to do that.

All right.

We're having way too much fun with this.

We're already, you know, 40 something odd minutes

into the podcast and we've got more questions to answer.

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All right, we are flying along here

through these list of hypotheticals.

Like a Boeing jet through the sky.

The next topic I think is the one

that really catalyzed this whole episode for us

and the one that we were most excited to,

I don't know, dive into or pontificate on.

Sure, sure, you love that word these days.

Have I said it already this podcast?

I can't be sure, you're on so much Red Bull.

The question is, what if Germany won World War II?

How would that have changed motorcycling?

And there are some sort of obvious answers here,

but there's more, some more nuanced stuff.

We reached out to our friend Matt Oxley,

who joined us for the MotoGP Mark Marquez episode earlier

this season.

He is, of course, a very learned motorcycle historian.

He had lots of interesting stuff to say.

And I thought it was funny, Spurge, also,

that Chase pointed out that this question was like supposed,

it started as a joke.

Like one of the producers in Philadelphia,

our buddy Mike, he said,

oh yeah, what if Germany won World War II?

Then how would motorcycling change?

You mean something like that?

And Chase was like, huh, that's actually pretty good.

I'm going to put it on the list.

And he was like, no, no, I was kidding.

Well, I think it's interesting.

It's like, even when we're doing pre-pro for this,

like if you've never seen it,

there was a TV show on the sci-fi network

called The Man in the High Castle,

where it was actually like a,

I think it ran for like four or five seasons,

but it was the same thing.

Like what if Germany won World War II?

What would the world, what would America, you know?

Less focused on motorcycles, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I do think it was fun.

What I was excited for,

and the reason we picked Matt Oxley for this

is that Matt has written about post-World War II Europe

and how it influenced motorcycles.

And I'll be honest, Matt's response to this question

was not what I thought it was going to be.

And I am kind of glad for that,

because it left my take on this, you know,

as a wide open lane being that Matt didn't, you know,

choose to drive down that path.

I think that I would like to pause quickly

in this discussion of what if Germany won World War II

and say that the laughter banter and fun

we were having with this is not in any way reflective

of some of the obvious horrendous fallout

that there would have been if Germany had won World War II.

We don't think that we're not really gonna touch

on all of the ways that it would have disrupted.

Bitter hurl, a very negative implication on the world.

Exactly, we're not laughing or poking fun

at anti-Semitism in any way.

Obviously, that's not funny.

But from an industrial and specifically motorcycling side

of things, where do we think this would have led?

And I think there are a few interesting discussions

to be had.

So, Spurge, you wanna kick it off?

You wanna kick it off with what Matt thinks

or what you think?

Let's start off with what Matt thinks.

So, for those of you that might not be familiar,

we've had Matt on the podcast in the past,

depending on whether or not you're following along

with season 11.

We had Matt on to talk about his book

for Mark the Magnificent.

He is a historian.

He is a MotoGP commentor.

He runs his own podcast.

He's somebody that has followed everything

from the 20s and the foundation of motorcycling

all the way through to current day.

He was the perfect person to start out with.

And Matt came back to us and said,

and we're paraphrasing,

because Matt sent us quite a response,

we'd probably all be riding around on BMW Flat Twins.

And the other pivot that he made was,

well, we'd probably be riding around on Autobahn's,

German freeways, that you can go as fast as you wanna go.

There's no speed limit.

You can be blast around 200 miles an hour if you'd like,

as long as you do it in a responsible way.

He gave us a story recently

where he was driving down the Autobahn at 120,

feeling like a rock star and people were blowing by him.

And he's like, holy hell, this is crazy.

He also went on to pontificate that

if the Nazis would have won the war,

then most likely Japan would have won the war as well,

because they were allies.

And so in addition to things like the BMW Flat Twin

being prevalent, you could have potentially

also had brands like Honda and Yamaha

and Suzuki and Kawasaki come up to prominent power quicker.

Or, yeah, sooner.

Or maybe, and maybe this is kind of a pivot

that I don't know if Matt was kind of completely thinking

about, maybe some of those brands would not have existed

because the reason some of those brands

got into motorcycling.

Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Are you talking about, are you talking about

Matt's take here?

Are you talking about your take?

Are you pivoting?

Are you doing another pivot?

No, I'm not pivoting.

I'm saying that one of the things that Matt throughout here

was that these brands would have been massive,

but what if they, I'll wait, it was gonna be a pivot.

Matt said, what if they were massive?

I was gonna throw a counterpoint out there.

Right, he points out that if one country,

if Jeremy had won the war,

then there would have been different outcomes elsewhere.

And who knows what economic implications

that would have had.

Yeah, and I think that's a fair thing to point out.

Spurge, this time I'm gonna take the baton

and I'm gonna pivot.

Run for it.

Because we had the same take, I think.

I think you were about to say the same thing I wrote down,

which was if Japan had come out, quote unquote,

victorious from World War II as well,

sure, you'd think, well, the Japanese big four

motorcycling companies would have just been

even more prevalent, right?

Right.

But what I wrote down in my notes,

which I think is what you were reaching for,

was was it not the post-war austerity in Japan

that spurred the motorcycle industry

to some extent in Japan, right?

Say that in normal language that everybody can understand.

Because everything was so f***ed,

people had to use motorcycles

and that spurred a motorcycle industry

and created innovation and industry

and eventually machines that they could sell

to Americans for cheap.

And also because Japan was not allowed

to produce certain things after World War II.

Right.

You know, because of the implications

that they couldn't go into industries

that might have war application.

Right.

And that's sort of like famously,

actually it might be a World War I thing,

kind of think of it, maybe Mr. Remix,

but obviously BMW's logo is famously a propeller, right?

Because it was an aircraft company,

to some extent, and then was disallowed from doing that

because they were like,

y'all can't be trusted with flying stuff right now

because you keep invading people.

And so they were like,

all right, I want to make these things with wheels on them.

It's less exciting, but we can do that too.

And so yeah, all these things,

all these like little tweaks to,

what seems like a small thing like,

oh, well, not a small thing.

What seems like a simple editing of history, right?

It's sort of like,

but World War II just went differently.

That's easy enough to say and easy enough to imagine,

but sometimes the fact that it went a certain way

was what turned the industry or the economy upside down

in exactly the right way to create these companies

that then later flourished for different reasons, right?

Is that fair to say?

That is fair to say.

Now I feel like this history teacher spurred.

Mr. Dunbar, will you tell us please

what you think about all this?

So here's my pivot.

And this is what I thought Matt was going to say.

So Matt wrote a book called Stealing Speed.

It was my first experience reading Matt's work.

Back in 2019, Mark Gardner wrote an article for us

reviewing a graphic novel version of Stealing Speed.

That was the one I read.

That is up on Common Thread.

And you can head over to Common Thread now

and read about motorcycling's Cold War spy story,

Stealing Speed, it's a true story.

And Matt did the research to bring this to us.

And here's what, here's a too long, didn't read version.

After World War II, Germany, Berlin specifically,

well, Germany gets split into half, right?

And there's East Germany and there's West Germany.

And for those not familiar, there was a wall.

There was a wall in Berlin specifically.

And the piece of this is in East Germany

is ruled by the Soviets and it falls under communist rule.

And there's a little motorcycle company that was DKW

and that becomes MZ.

And there's an engineer there named Walter Caden.

And Walter worked on the V2 Rocket Project

under Nazi Germany.

And, you know, Matt goes on to explain in his book

that, you know, Walter wasn't really a Nazi.

He didn't believe in the Nazi propaganda and BS,

but he just liked being a scientist.

And so, he developed this-

And the Nazis had the money and they had the rockets

and he wanted to work on rockets.

And so, he developed a V2, or he was part of the development

of the V2 two stroke rocket project.

Nazis lose the war.

And in the 1950s, he's sitting around his little workshop,

building motorcycle engines.

And in 1954, they're producing these two stroke rocket,

or these two stroke motorcycle engines

with this rocket technology.

And those little 1954 engines produced roughly

a hundred horsepower per liter.

Fast forward, you know, five or six years,

those same engines are producing 200 horsepower per liter.

Walter develops the expansion chamber, disc valve induction.

He takes two stroke technology and he turns it

into something that is very important

in the world of motorcycling.

And then in the end of 1961, Ernst Degner,

who was a co-engineer on the project,

but also the one racing these motorcycles for MZ,

defects, he and his family are smuggled out of the country.

And where do they go, Zach?

What country do they go to in 1961?

Japan.

What?

Japan?

Oh, I didn't, yeah, I thought you said something else,

but yes, Japan is the answer.

And by 1962, Suzuki has this two stroke technology,

their winning races, and the rest is pretty much history.

There's a lot more to the story.

You should read the book if you haven't,

but the point being is because this East Block

Soviet controlled post World War II motorcycle company

had no hope of all the four stroke innovation and technology

that other manufacturers were playing with.

They had to use the technology

that they had at their fingertips and revolutionize it

to go out and win races and they do it.

They do it wildly successfully, nobody sees it coming.

And then that technology goes on to power MotoGP

up until when did two strokes?

2000.

2000?

2001, yeah.

So for roughly 40 years, two stroke technology becomes

like the prominent force in motorcycle racing.

Would that have happened if the Germans

would have won the war?

Probably not.

And I think when we think about that,

what's the alternate reality that you see there then,

Spurge, like DKW, because Matt pointed out in his note test

that DKW was at some point around that time

or just pre-war maybe,

was the biggest motorcycle manufacturer in Europe.

And so do you think DKW or MZ then becomes this,

or that they share that technology with BMW?

BMW starts making two strokes, we don't know.

Or maybe DKW and MZ create, they become this world power

and they start winning the Isle of Man TT

and they start winning TP events.

I think maybe they wouldn't have focused

on this little non-performing technology.

They wouldn't have wasted time trying to figure out

how to double the horsepower of a two stroke motor.

They would have focused on four stroke innovation, right?

I see.

So like maybe two stroke engines.

Because they would have been living

in the lap of luxury.

Yeah.

They would have been all super chargers

and thick steak for dinner.

Boeing would be producing jet powered motorcycles

in an alternate universe, but seriously,

I think the question becomes,

we still have die hard two stroke fans in the off-road world.

Imagine a two stroke,

imagine anybody riding around in a KTM engine

without an expansion chamber on it, right?

Which is to be clear, sorry to interrupt you,

but quick sidebar, that's what two strokes were

for a long, two-stroke technology

had been around for a very long time, decades.

And they were these simple little things

that were very dirty and unsophisticated

and they just sort of chugged along

and it wasn't until, to your point, Spurge.

Walter Caden.

Right, it wasn't until Caden,

until someone figured out how to harness the-

Potential.

The waves of energy in the exhaust system

and create expansion chambers

that two strokes really became such a force.

So I doubt that they would have invested in like,

hey, here's what we're gonna do.

Take this antiquated technology

and figure out a way to improve it

because they probably wouldn't have gone down that road.

They probably would have gone down the road

of taking what's already performing and evolving it.

Right, right.

Matt, why was that not Matt's?

I'm glad, but I'm also very surprised

that Matt didn't think about it

from the point of view of his own book.

Well, he also had some other interesting notes, I thought.

One of which, just to change gears a little bit,

was that German engineering goes back a long, long way.

The reason that Germany has this reputation,

I think currently, but certainly over the past number

of decades, I don't know, as being an engineering hotspot

and hub in the world, goes back to Matt's estimation

to the 15th and 16th centuries,

where there were guilds that were created

to protect the crafts of the craftsman.

You had to be a member in order to be,

you had to be sort of subject to exams and licenses to be,

it goes way back to metallurgy and creating things.

And the German sort of like culture and structure

supported that.

And it grew into what we know it to be today,

whether you know, whatever, Mercedes and Audi

and Porsche and so on and so forth.

But it goes back a really long way.

Another thing to change gears yet again,

that he pointed out was that Hitler was anti-motorcycle

because he was pro-family.

He didn't want dudes in leather jackets,

bopping around from town to town,

rolling in the hay with the fair maidens.

He wanted Volkswagen Beatles with 2.2 kids in them

so that they could grow up and fight a war for him,

presumably.

But he didn't, motorcycling wasn't, he didn't like that.

And so that's another interesting facet of this

that just like, there's just umpteen different ways

you could take that.

But the other piece of that that Matt pointed out too

was that at the time German motorcycle racers were not,

like there was no expectation of failure, right?

So they were expected to go out and lay it on the line.

He gave us a quote.

It was sort of like a German, or is it a BMW?

Maybe it was BMW specifically.

Or maybe it was that NSKK club that he talked about,

the Motorcycle Racing Club, I forget.

But he basically said, you're not allowed to be afraid.

That's like the rule of like being a racer

for this organization.

You're not allowed to be afraid.

And essentially you will put it all out there.

And like if you have to die for the sport,

like you'll go out and you'll end it.

And I think about just that.

If that was the mentality of like the sport

and winning at all costs becomes like the feature

of Motorcycle Racing, would we have had safety,

innovation and technology evolve the same way?

That's a good question.

It's interesting to me to think about BMW,

obviously is the most obvious German brand

to bring up in the context of Motorcycle Podcast.

And BMW has done a pretty good job, I think.

Maybe they were slow in the uptake with certain things

and maybe they innovated in certain ways.

But if you look at BMW's lineup now, it's pretty broad.

And they've done the thing that long-time listener J

wished that Harley did, right?

Which is like branch out in all these directions.

And there were people, excuse me, there were people

when BMW came out with an inline four superbike

that were sort of like, that's not a BMW.

I don't, that's not what that is.

I don't recognize that as a, yeah, as the BMW that I know.

Probably people felt the same way about a Porsche SUV

or something like that, I don't know.

But it's been a boon for the company.

And the BMW has shown that it is willing to sort of like

take the Honda path and just be like,

we'll build whatever kind of engine we think will work

and be awesome and sell.

Which I think is-

And Porsche is selling a lot of SUVs.

And Porsche selling a lot of SUVs, yeah, that's right.

We had, I think, obviously, again, there are just

a thousand and four different ways

that you could take this whole hypothesis

on what if World War II went differently.

But it is, I don't know, it's interesting to,

I guess the little vignettes that I took away from Matt's

digestion of this question that we gave him was sort of like,

imagine an Autobahn across Iowa and lots of BMW Flat Twins,

which is sort of like easy to say

and easy to imagine quickly.

But to your point about the expansion chamber

and the two-stroke technology,

and to the point that I brought up about,

about the economic realities in Japan,

you know, arguably creating some of the companies

that we still know today.

It's like, I don't know, it's one of those things

you might not want it to go a different way

just because we're attached to the way that it is now.

I want to move on in the sake of time,

but like, I believe, wasn't Ducati the same way?

Wasn't Ducati like, weren't they kind of forced to,

they were making like radios or something like that?

And then they couldn't do that

because of like wartime technology or something like that.

And they were kind of forced to do it.

Oh yeah, you may be right.

And then they like,

and I think they put a little engine in a,

on a bicycle basically, you know,

that like sort of you could putt around on and,

yeah, maybe that's true.

That sort of rings the bell.

Again, I'm not going to pretend that I know

the full history of Ducati off the top of my head.

I would like to end with something that Matt ended with,

which I talked about in the beginning here,

which is the sort of maybe more somber recognition

of what the world would have looked like

if Germany had won World War II.

He pointed out, historian that he is,

that DKW, a company that we talked about before,

had a star rider as the Nazis rose to power

by the name of Sineweg maybe.

I'm not sure how to spell it or say it.

And he was Jewish and fled to the Netherlands

because of persecution.

And he was hid in someone's house

to try to avoid persecution and was found

and was sent to Auschwitz and was murdered.

Perfectly good motorcycle rider and citizen of the world.

And I think that's an important thing to remember

in this sort of hypothetical situation

that we had a lot of fun laughing and yelling about

is that probably for the best that didn't go that way.

And probably for the best that for the sake of time,

we talk about safety, right?

So we pontificated what would safety evolve with

if the Germans had won the war,

but what would a truly safe motorcycle look like?

And this is a question that came in from one Ari Henning.

And he says, it seems like the obvious answer

is the car, but it could be fun to explore the ways

that motorcycles inherent risks could be mitigated,

i.e. what if we had extra wide wheels to add stability?

What if there was some sort of protection from impacts

or restraint system for riders, et cetera?

So Zach, who did we wanna reach out to to ask the question,

can you build a truly safe motorcycle?

This seemed like a fun challenge for our old buddy,

Ryan F9, and he came back to us with some fun couple paragraphs

sort of working this all out in his brain.

And I'm gonna blow up our plan a little bit here, Spurge,

and say this is what he ultimately said.

He said, I would choose big pontoons attached

to the motorcycle.

Basically, car bumpers can detect collisions

in 10 milliseconds and there's no reason

that a motorcycle's extremities couldn't be made

to do the same.

Have that signal a fire for an airbag system.

And I don't just mean a chest airbag, by the way,

that we're currently using like Tech Air

we talked about earlier,

but some sort of like three foot thick bubble

that envelops the whole rider,

like an instant car size marshmallow

to take the impact around a rider

if such an impact occurred.

The thing that he settled on, Spurge,

which I think needs to be brought up at this point,

was he had another great quote where he said,

there's just no good way to pit 500 pounds

against 5,000 pounds.

And that is ultimately in the few paragraphs

that he sent us where he sort of chewed this over

in his mind and said, well, you could do this,

or you could do that, but that wouldn't work.

You have to do this.

Ultimately, what he pointed out very rightly

because he's a smart guy,

is that you got a small vehicle, you got a big vehicle.

If you have a car hitting a motorcycle

or motorcycle hitting a car or whatever it is,

the motorcycle and rider is just lighter and smaller.

And the lighter, smaller thing in the world of physics

takes the hit harder.

And so all of the ways that you would try to come up with

a way to make a motorcycle really, really safe

is trying to combat that fact, that physical fact.

And one of the examples that he gave,

and I thought this was really interesting,

because what I first started thinking about this

as a question, I immediately kind of gravitated

in a similar direction to what he went about

with the BMW C1, which you've never seen before.

It was like a BMW scooter,

but with like a whole row cage around it and a windshield,

and I believe it even had seat belts.

Yeah, imagine sort of like a car bucket seat

with a handlebar in front of it.

And so like a scooter, imagine a scooter,

but with a high back seat,

and then from the headlight to the tail light,

imagine like a piece of like a roll bar slash windshield

in front of you, they're still around sometimes.

If you travel in Europe at all,

you might see them parked somewhere.

They're kind of funny looking.

They got a windshield wiper on them.

But yeah, you can still stick your arms and legs

out the side of the bike,

but you have a canopy over the top of you

and theoretically some protection.

And for those of you that are listening on Spotify or YouTube,

with the video, you won't have to imagine,

we'll make sure there's a photo of it up there.

But that's where my mind,

when I started thinking about this question for myself,

it was like, okay, that's where I'm going in my mind.

But Ryan went on to point out that

while there was a lot of success

with this particular C1, if it glanced off a car,

it could kind of easily bop away a little bit,

maybe easier than a traditional motorcycle.

But that's where he got into the point of like,

if there was a head on collision,

and it wasn't just a glance off,

that 500 pounds versus 5,000,

the motorcycle, whether it's a C1 with a cage around it

or not, is most likely going to lose that battle.

With automotive, so much of the engineering goes

into like the crumple zone.

And like how much of the impact can be taken

by the vehicle itself,

not the person driving the vehicle.

Right, and he did point out crumple zone.

He was sort of like, you could have a crumple zone,

some sort of like big thing that sticks out

in front of a motorcycle.

So if you hit anything, you don't hit quite as hard.

But then rightly said, that's like too hard

to rationalize really.

And he talked about seat belts,

like attaching the rider to the motorcycle

is like good in some ways and very bad in some ways.

So what I think, what I came around to,

like I love his idea of the big car size marshmallow,

that just goes flap and like inflates

and is around the rider.

Sort of like, it reminds me of like avalanche airbags,

have you ever seen those?

That just sort of like create a cocoon around the person.

Something like that except made for impact

and less for compression and snow and whatever.

But I'm gonna just change course for a minute here.

I'm gonna circle back to it, I promise.

Did you ever watch Road Runner

and Wiley Coyote Road Runner cartoons

when you were a kid, Spurge, or maybe you still watched them?

Yeah, that's all I watch.

So one of the things that bothered me, even as a child,

about the Coyote is that Coyote would come up

with these schemes, right?

He'd have all this like equipment set up.

He's like, I'm gonna catch this Road Runner.

And he would do this thing and have this mechanism set up

with a little sling and a bungee and a set of wheels

and like, I'm gonna trap him

and he's gonna go into the net and then I'm gonna get him.

And then like some fricking one in a million thing would happen

and the bungee cord would wrap itself around his tail

and it would sling him against the rock

and slam him and then the vehicle would hit him and then.

And in my mind, I always thought, you know, Coyote,

that wasn't that bad an idea to begin with.

You just got a little bit unlucky.

I think if you just went back to the drawing board

and tried that same thing again,

but of course that's not the nature of the cartoon

and that's not the nature of the Coyote.

Coyote always had a new idea.

He was buying Acme products.

He should have traaged brands, you know?

Where I'm going with this is the BMW C1,

I don't think was designed necessarily to be,

I don't think safety was the point.

I think it was more comfort for, you know,

keeping yourself out of the rain, whatever.

But to me, it's interesting to think that the C1,

the BMW C1 was produced in a time

when airbags weren't a thing, well, sorry, airbags existed,

but airbag technology in a personal motorcycling sense

has come a long way since then.

And it's interesting, and even like curtain airbags

and cars have come a long way since then.

It's interesting to me if you,

maybe to Ryan's point, sort of,

if you took a BMW C1, if you took a scooter

or any motorcycle, any two-wheeled vehicle

that represents scootering or motorcycling or whatever,

and you put a canopy over the top of it,

and then you built airbags into the whole thing

so that if you were hit from behind

or if you hit anything in front of you,

or if you hit from the side, an airbag would go off

and envelop the whole thing

in this three-foot-thick car-sized marshmallow,

as he put it.

And I don't think that that's something

that anyone's working on, really.

And maybe it's because the motorcycles are dangerous,

and that's why I like them and whatever.

I don't know if there's other subconscious things

we want to talk about, but I think it's curious

that that vehicle existed in a time

when the airbag technology wasn't up to date,

and now that airbag technology has come to date,

no one circled back around to that, like the Coyote.

Like, go back to that idea, Coyote,

it wasn't that bad an idea, especially if you have the-

A giant slingshot, you know?

Strap yourself to a rocket, call Boeing.

Here's where I kind of landed with us.

Right now, the top options for safety that we have

are, and Ryan pointed this out, are wearable airbags,

and those are derived from what?

Where did we first see wearable airbags come into play, Zach?

Las Vegas casinos.

Motorcycle racing, good answer.

Yes, that's what I meant to say.

Shoot, gosh, stupid.

So the safety technology that we are using on the street

is derived from motorcycle race tracks.

If you're on a motorcycle race track,

the type of crash that you're going to have

is very different than the type of crash

that you're gonna have on the street, right?

Potentially.

Potentially, but follow along with me here.

What you're not seeing evolve from motorcycle racing,

per se, is adaptive cruise control.

You don't have adaptive cruise control on race bikes

because that's not presumably something you would want,

but that's technology we see on the street,

and for those of you that aren't familiar,

adaptive cruise control in the world is sensors

that can tell how far a vehicle is in front of you

or potentially behind you,

and it adjusts the speed automatically

if it senses that you're getting too close

to a vehicle in front of you.

So where I landed with this,

wasn't motorcycle wearable airbags

are not the way to move forward?

Or, hey, to your point about the Coyote,

we tried an airbag in a Goldwing 10, 15 years ago,

and it didn't work, so we just didn't evolve that technology.

What I think is the way forward

for a more safe motorcycle is for,

we started this podcast talking about the data

and the accelerometers and the gyroscopes

that are built in to an Alpine Star's airbag.

What if the Alpine Star's airbag talked

to the motorcycle adaptive sensors?

So on a racetrack, if you're too close

to the rider in front of you,

the last thing you want to have happen

is for the airbag to go off prematurely,

that's gonna screw up your race day, right?

Like you're supposed to be close

and banging handlebars and everything else.

But rolling down the four or five freeway,

you don't wanna be that close to the person

in front of you.

So if there was a way for the sensors on a motorcycle

to be the car bumpers that you and Ryan

are kinda talking about here,

and if it's coming up along a vehicle

or an item in front of you too quickly,

and it can sense that the impact is imminent,

or if there's something coming at you from the side

and the sensor's like,

oh, you don't want something coming at you

that way that fast,

it triggers the wearable airbag to go off.

And if there is an impact,

it allows you to be propelled off the motorcycle.

The reason that we don't have seatbelts on motorcycles

to Ryan's point is that you do not wanna come

to a full stop against a 5,000 pound truck.

You wanna fly off and get as far away as possible,

and that's where the airbag goes off

and you survive the impact.

So that's how I see this being

a potential realistic evolution forward

is that that Alpine Stars airbag that you're wearing

and that Ducati adaptive cruise control sensor

is expanded, and now all of a sudden,

and Ducati's not the only one

I'm gonna be using them as an example,

but now they talk to each other,

and now that airbag can go off much sooner,

and honestly, in that situation,

if ultimately you slam on the brakes hard enough

and you don't come to an impact,

but your airbag goes off like inconvenient,

but let's be honest,

probably better the airbag go off

and you not need it than the alternative.

Okay, I don't hate that, I don't hate it.

And I know that for what it's worth,

I think it was Bosch years and years ago now,

I'm probably still working on it,

talking about connective communication technology

between vehicles so that to your point,

that kind of thing could be more realistic,

like the motorcycle that you're riding has this,

call it connect link, whatever,

and then every car that's sold has connect link,

and then when you're coming up to an intersection

around a blind curve on a foggy night,

your motorcycle knows there's a car there,

and so it's not gonna initiate an airbag deployment,

not yet anyway, but it knows,

it can tell you like there can be a signal on the dash

or something, it can be like,

car ahead or something like that.

And that's how Bosch imagined it years ago,

and obviously that's just one situation

in a theoretically a rural place

since really different than riding around in a city,

blah, blah, blah, but yeah,

I think you're onto something.

I still like, I'm still attaching myself

to Ryan's idea of the car-sized marshmallow

and playing itself around the ride,

but the old giant marshmallow.

It's almost lunchtime for Zach,

so he's got marshmallows on the brain.

It's really a marshmallow, so my mind, yes, true.

All right, well, perhaps like I said,

you know, trying to imagine ways that motorcycles

could be as safe as possible,

ultimately gets us to a vehicle with four wheels

in a cage around it and we sort of just back away

from that slowly because that's not why we're here.

Well, I think that there's something to that too.

All right, moving on.

The final thing, the final hypothetical,

comes directly from producer Chase himself.

He wanted to know what if internal combustion engine

motorcycles were banned tomorrow?

What if gas-powered bikes are just whatever

in the interest of trying to save Americans

from all of the horrors of motorcycling,

you know, Congress passes the no more ice bikes act

and alternative fuel motorcycles and bicycles are okay,

but gas-powered motorcycles are not okay.

Gas-powered trucks, semi-trucks, big ships,

your hybrid Prius, still fine.

Gas-powered motorcycles, no longer.

You're not allowed to have them anymore.

This is the hypothetical.

And one of the examples that we pulled

where this isn't potentially as far-fetched

as some people might think is that back in 2016,

Lance Oliver penned an article about Paris.

Paris' ban on old motorcycles begins next month.

So for those of you living in Paris,

you might be more familiar with this,

but basically Paris created a law

where motorcycles produced before the year 2000 are banned.

You can't ride them anymore, not inside the city limits.

Right.

And I think there's like maybe similar stuff

going on in traffic laws in like London.

There's like congestion charges

and there's sort of like certain places

where you're not allowed to bring certain cars.

Isn't that true?

I don't know.

Mexico City, New Delhi, you know,

Lance references other cities around the world

that are toying around with ideas like this.

So in a country like America,

where motorcycling is a minority practice hobby,

it is not inconceivable that the government would say,

hey, you know what?

We don't want to deal with this anymore

in an effort to reduce pollution,

no more internal combustion engines for motorcycles.

You got to figure out something else.

And who did we ask about this one, Zach?

This one we put to Mr. Spencer Robert

because he's got a keen imagination.

And he also just bought an electric motorcycle.

I think he already sold it actually.

I did it, okay.

But yes, he did have an electric motorcycle in his,

it was actually a live wear one, I think, wasn't it?

Yeah.

They had in his garage for a few months there,

but I think it might be gone already.

Anywho, he knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

And he had some interesting thoughts here.

Again, there's lots of places your mind can go here.

Like what if internal combustion bikes were made illegal?

Well, like, oh, then there'd be like this underworld

where people would be-

Yeah, Spencer was talking about Star Wars.

He went down a deep Star Wars Jedi gas bike.

I kinda, I like that.

Yeah, you know, this sort of like this underground culture

of like we're gonna race at midnight

with really, really fast motorcycles,

but really, really good mufflers

so that no one can hear them, that kind of thing.

Anyway, I can see him riding a CTXP

about this already in his mind

where he's like, guys, here's what we're gonna do.

The conclusion he came to was, and I quote,

I love gas bikes, I love how they sound,

how they feel, how they smell,

but I love the freedom and excitement of being on two wheels

way more than I love any specific byproduct

of burning gasoline.

And I think most riders would agree

whether they realize it or not.

And so his brought like, he went on to say

that, you know, the people who really love riding

would get electric bikes, would get something electric.

And would we rue the day

because we miss the sound that they make

or like the power they have or something like that maybe,

but I think it's a pretty obvious conclusion to jump to

and I think he jumped to it in exactly the right way,

which is that people who actually care about it

would still do it.

They would just find an alternative fuel.

So you'd have your wind-powered motorcycles,

your electric motorcycles,

your wheels can you power something with,

I don't know.

I think that's a perfect segue into where my mind went

with this, which I think oftentimes we,

as a society, I'm gonna use the music example, right?

So like, you know, records were inefficient

so we developed cassette tapes.

Cassette tapes, you had to fast forward and rewind,

but they were more portable than records.

And then all of a sudden we got the CD

and let's ignore mini discs and other things,

but then we got the CD, right?

And CDs were portable like a cassette deck,

but you could skip song to song like a record.

And that was the prominent technology.

And then it went into MP3s.

And so my point being is that like,

you didn't have two competing forces at one time.

You know, basically the industry said,

hey, this is what we're gonna do.

This is what we're gonna focus on and let's move forward.

And you're seeing that a little bit.

Which doesn't say like cassette tapes and CDs

existed at the same time, surely,

but you're saying that like the industry

had agreed on a way to move forward.

Is that what you're saying?

Exactly, okay.

And until that technology has proven inefficient

with the way MP3s kind of came to power,

there was no reason to change.

And so what's interesting with the internal combustion engine

is that for years it's evolved,

but the fundamental technology hasn't had a reason to change.

And then some of the environmental implications

were coming around and it was like,

well, let's think about electric.

Can we build something better?

Can we build something that doesn't pollute?

And everybody just kind of went with this,

oh, electrical be the next thing.

And it kind of almost stopped

some of the exploration and innovation.

Is this when you circle back to the Boeing jet bike again?

I'm not gonna circle back to the joy of the Boeing jet bike.

That still requires fuel.

But one of the articles that Dustin Whelan wrote back

in 2023 was that there was a study that finds

that lithium mining for EV batteries is unsustainable

in the long scheme of things.

And the environmental implications of that.

And so I believe it was Toyota that came out

and said, oh, we're actually just gonna produce hybrids

because we can produce, I don't know,

11 hybrids for the same environmental impact

of one electric vehicle.

So there's already this debate happening here.

But my point in this whole rambling mess

is that why electric motorcycles?

We already know that the big four, Kawasaki, Suzuki,

Honda and Yamaha are challenging themselves

to build a hydrogen powered bike.

And so far they haven't had any reason to really do it.

It's kind of like plotting along.

Kawasaki did showcase an engine at Suzuka back in 2020.

So like, but I haven't heard anything more about it

since 2024.

And so maybe internal combustion engines being banned

is the catalyst to say, you know what?

Running full electric is probably not gonna be the way

this is gonna work out long term,

whether that's for environmental implications

or just sustainability or range anxiety or whatever.

But what if the big four take all of the effort

that they've been putting into internal combustion engines

and saying, you know what, we're gonna finally solve this

in a way that makes sense and is reasonable.

Okay, yeah.

In other words, the thing that we pointed out

about post World War II Japan

and how the state of that nation

maybe propelled a motorcycle industry forward,

perhaps something like this would change the outlook

that everyone had on what the options are

for creating propulsion.

Why are we looking at steam?

But let me steam the steam work pretty well.

Steam got people across those planes way back when.

Let's just throw some coal in an engine,

let that produce a steam and then chug a chug a chug a chug a.

But let me ask you a question.

In your research for this, in your pontification,

and looking at Spencer's response

and thinking outside the box.

And I was guilty of this for my first round of thoughts,

but like, did you just kind of resolve yourself to like,

okay, well, we don't have internal combustion engines,

are people gonna buy electric bikes?

Is that where your mind went?

Yeah, of course, because that's the only option right now.

Because there is another option, right?

And it's sitting there waiting in the wings.

And there's a very obvious case to be made

that if you just said no more gas powered motorcycles,

like they're all banned from the streets,

then the first thing you reach for

is the thing that has been slowly developing on the side, right?

So yeah, I think that's where my mind went

right out of the gates.

But there's always innovation happening,

and I think that you're right that something else

could come to the fore, come to fruition.

I do think that it's fair to point out,

especially the way that motorcycling sits

in American society,

that it would be by and large a death knell for it all, right?

Because the industry would eventually recover to some extent,

but there's not enough necessity for people to need it,

and therefore there's not enough demand

for there to be supply.

It would only happen if it would just be people

who really didn't wanna let go of it

because they loved it or whatever.

But I think that's where my mind went from like,

I saw it as,

so take my hydrogen pivot off the table,

and my initial thought to you was,

electric, okay, who wins?

And I think there's enough brands out there

that have already invested in this,

where I invested in electric, you mean?

Yeah, like I do think to your point about,

for America, it's an enthusiast-based piece,

who just gives it up and says,

I don't feel like dealing with this versus

who wants to keep pushing forward.

And I think you have brands like Zero or Stark,

or even KTM or Can-Am, for example,

like Can-Am, Revamped, Starting with Electric,

where it's like they could probably continue,

and actually they might have more success.

Livewire might start selling more motorcycles

because now you can't go out and buy a big twin Harley.

You can't go out and buy a sports car.

And so maybe the alternate universe here

is that 10 years down the road,

Stark, Zero, Can-Am, and Livewire are your biggest brands

with Honda, Kawasaki, KTM, and BMW trying to catch up.

And I list those because KTM, Honda, Kawasaki,

and BMW are already dabbling in EV motorcycles.

Yes, they already have something for sale somewhere somehow.

Yeah, I think it's possible.

Well, Spurge, would you stop riding motorcycles

if you had to switch to electric?

No, I feel the same way Spencer does.

I love, yeah, I feel exactly the way he does.

I like how they sound and how they feel and how they smell.

And I love the feel of learning a clutch and a transmission

and all the things that you do on a gas-powered bike

that by and large you don't do on an electric bike.

But I have fun on electric bikes

and I like the experience of,

yeah, as Spencer put it, the freedom and excitement

of being on two wheels more than like the noise or the smell.

That's the thing that I'm truly drawn to.

And I would miss some of the byproducts of gas engines,

but yeah, what about you?

How do you feel about it?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd be sharp.

You'd be first in line for a Can-Am.

I'd be shopping for a Stark.

I'd be looking for used free rides.

I'd be checking out Can-Am like, yeah, 100%.

I'd be excited to see if zero could shave a few pounds

off their adventure bike and make it something

that's maybe a little bit more hardcore adventure focused.

I think there's a ton of ideas,

but I do think where I ultimately landed with this is

would this encourage manufacturers to think outside,

not just internal combustion engine,

but think outside electric and bring alternatives

to market that might make more sense,

not just for the motorcycling industry,

but for the real true evolution of transportation

moving forward.

That's an interesting question.

And yeah, I mean, I think ultimately

that stuff hasn't been a necessity.

So it hasn't been brought to the fore, right?

Tip kind of to your point.

I don't know exactly.

I think I was listening to radio yesterday.

I'm not sure how accurate this is,

but I'm pretty sure a barrel of oil

is like 60 something dollars right now.

It's not a big enough problem.

As much as we talk about,

as much as you can lean into environmental issues,

you can lean into this, that and the other thing,

which I'm not, which I'm, yeah,

I think that it's worth considering

or worrying about impacts that we have on the planet

or whether or not things are sustainable,

whether it's digging lithium out of the ground

or digging oil out of the ground.

But the truth is it's just not,

it's not a big enough problem right now, right?

Can I ask you a question?

Because I know that you said you were listening to this stat.

I too, in preparation for this,

was doing some outside research

and part of what I was looking at

was the automotive industry

and the rollbacks that we've had in EV in America

because of current administration's

not prioritizing EV incentives.

And so a lot of auto manufacturers are now kind of saying,

oh, you know what, maybe we'll just stick

with internal combustion engines for a while.

On average, how many barrels of oil

are we bringing in from Canada per day?

You just talked about $60 a barrel.

How many millions of barrels

are we bringing in in one day from Canada?

12, four, you went really big.

I don't have any idea.

Four million barrels per day.

And Canadian oil is primarily used

to refine for diesel fuel, right?

Like there's different grades of oil

and how it gets refined.

But my point is like, I heard that number

and I was like, I had to rewind the podcast

I was listening to and I was like,

no, that has to be like four billion a year,

four million, I'm sorry, million, four million a month

or four million barrels of oil per day.

That's a lot of barrels.

That blew my mind.

I just had no idea.

Okay.

Well, since we're talking about refining Canadian oil,

we've obviously gotten way off track.

I, Spurgeon, would like to thank Spencer Robert,

Ryan Fortnine, Ari Henning, producer Chase,

Matt Oxley, producer Mike, editor Matt,

Patrick Garvin and our old buddy Mark Cook for all.

Oh, and longtime listener Jay,

for all of the contributions to this podcast.

I had fun chewing this stuff over

and something tells me it'll be a bit of a dog whistle

for anyone who knows about history or economics

or aviation or barrels of oil to write in and say,

you idiots, you forgot to blah, blah, blah,

and you got this thing wrong.

And no, it wasn't DKW, it was whatever.

So feel free please to correct us

or pontificate, as Spurgeon likes to say,

on your own time and send an email to us

at highsidelociedatrevzilla.com.

We'd be happy to hear from you.

And if I used pontificate too much

and I was unaware of it, I apologize.

You can, maybe we make that part of the drinking game,

the highside locied drinking game before,

and every time Spurgeon says pontificate,

you have to take a drink.

But we currently live in a world

where internal combustion engines do exist and-

they are the majority power source

for how we ride around on two wheels.

And if you want your internal combustion engine

to sound a little bit better, a little bit throatier,

a little bit louder and more powerful,

well, you should consider an Akrapovic exhaust.

An Akrapovic exhaust is not just a premium exhaust

for your motorcycle.

An Akrapovic exhaust is also a key reason

why we get to play this game.

The engine sound guessing game brought to you by Akrapovic,

where Zach and I go toe-to-toe,

trying to guess the engine sound

that is about to ring out in your eardrums.

Indeed.

So there we go.

We're going to hear an engine start up, run for a minute,

rev a couple of times, maybe even shut off.

And we're going to try and guess what the heck it is.

Please shout it out if you know it, everybody.

Ah.

Wow.

that's one that's one velvety engine I was about to say velvety oh look you and I

are on the same wavelength today old buddy I tell you are all right Spurge

well what do you what do you got how many cylinders you hear Zach I hear to

to do it we agree I agree okay and are these cylinders parallel to each other

or are they in a V formation and if so mr. Dunbar what is the angle of the V

so I'm hearing I'm hearing a V formation mm-hmm I do not think I'm I'm I'm

hearing a stock muffler it okay like you said velvety but it sounds like it's

muffled appropriately I would say so I am I I'm afraid of saying you know my

gut reaction is that it's not a Harley engine and I'm not sure if that's what

you were driving at with the degrees of V no but not specifically I wasn't

driving at Harley I was just that's the clue you know obviously if you can say

oh it sounds like you know it sounds like a like a wider V or a narrower V

than that gives you a clue on what the type of bike is but yeah I don't know

man it's a tricky one I I think I hear V2 but you know like I wouldn't be

surprised if it's like oh it's actually a parallel twin lol it's the 1992 Yamaha

TDM and this is what it sounded like and I'd be like son of a I don't know I know

Harley's are 45 degrees what is Indian use do you know well it varies a little

bit but I think it's I think the big twins are 52 okay so they're a little

wider splay because yeah they give themselves a little more room for the

pistons not to hit themselves I can tell you what I didn't hear so I used to own

a KTM V twin was it the LC8 they called it yeah I think any any eight valve

liquid cooled KTM is called LC8 yeah and those were 75 degrees I believe yes and

then there was like the 90 there was a 90 degree V twin from Ducati or Suzuki or

yep or Honda I did not hear that I didn't hear performance V twin no that's

the other thing we should call it here is that's real lopie right I don't know

if it's just the way the person's revving it but it's very slow to rev it's

very kind of like it's very yeah lopie and slow to rev I don't know that's all

I can say and so it doesn't have the sort of like quick engine it doesn't spin up

quickly which sort of would hint at a performance engine this sounds like a

something that is a more mellow type of motorcycle I feel like it's gonna be

hint number two that we're gonna need to look at here well once you read hint

number one and we can we can take it from there I think before we need to

read hit number one my mind automatically went to Harley Davidson

Moto Guzzi or or Indian but then I'm also thinking about the fact that we

talked about a Honda Shadow in this episode and that's a that's a V twin as

well but let's go yeah let's go to the hints it's not a Harley I feel pretty

confident about that hit number one son of a chase V twin okay so let's do it

and then listen to it and then listen to it again okay hit number two is our

final hit remember we get two hints hit number two let me scroll down hold on

one second all right according to the owner that sent in this engine sound this

motorcycle has and I quote a Euro 4 engine modified with a Mistral catalyzed

mid pipe and an aluminum arrow and can DB killer installed producer chase this

is a horrible hint this is like this does nothing for us he wants to see us

twist in the wind according to the owner this motorcycle has a Euro 4 engine

modified with a Mistral catalyzed mid pipe and an aluminum classic and classic

motorcycle owner thing to be like tell us about your motorcycle and like well I

put this exhaust on it and I'm like no no I'm asking about your motorcycle not

about your exhaust anyway okay well let's look at one more listen here well

hang on your Euro 4 means that this would be an older engine right I like

your Moto Guzzi guess I like so let's give it another listen shall we

first let's listen one more time here

you know I like I like your Moto Guzzi guess that my mind went there too and I

feel confident in guessing a Moto Guzzi model but like when you get into like

low PV twins it could so easily be like a Suzuki Boulevard or like a hang on hang

on hang on so let's think about let's let's like let's think about the tent

to hint for psychoanalyzed producer so I don't know what the hell a Mistral

catalyzed mid pipe is but it doesn't sound like something that you're gonna

find on an Indian or a Suzuki or anything else an aluminum arrow and can

and honestly the fact that he's saying and can instead of muffler I'm guessing

this might be a European individual with a European model the fact that he's

talking about a Euro 4 engine I don't know any American that knows what

standard Euro compliant engine they have in their motorcycle I sure as hell

don't I am guessing or not it not guessing take guessing out of it an

arrow and can arrow for those of you listening and I'm sorry to Acropovich

who sponsors the engine now guessing game arrow is an exhaust manufacturer that

competes with Acropovich they typically are making exhausts for European

motorcycles in a in a general sense they're not making exhausts for they're

not making an arrow performance exhaust for a Honda shadow it's not it doesn't

happen so with that being said if we're if we're thinking about the fact that

this has an arrow exhaust on it I'm guessing it's a European okay bike but

stop dragging your feet just guess already will you what do you say I think

it's I think it's a Moto Guzzi I don't know what Moto Guzzi I think it is

sounds a little bit bigger to me it doesn't sound but I'm also like Euro 4 is

older like a Euro 4 is probably like a so it could be like a V11 or something

mid-2000s okay I don't know I don't I don't know the year of four years that

came in and out but I'm saying so Moto Guzzi for those of you that aren't

familiar is gonna be a 90 degree v-twin mounted transverse so Ducati v-twin's

are mounted longitudinally that right well anyway sorry let me start again

Moto Guzzi crankshaft is longitudinal the cylinders are transverse cylinder

stick out each side sort of like a BMW except it's a 90 degree v-twin instead

of a 180 flat twin Ducati is a 90 degree v-twin where the crankshaft is

transverse so the the the cylinders are being point up and forward instead of

out to each side the point is it's a 90 degree v-twin 90 degree v-twin's often

sounds similar to Spurgeon a parallel twin a parallel twin with a 270 degree

crank pin offset yeah that's what I was gonna say yes a motorcycle engine that

has a well there are lots and lots of motorcycles in my mind a motorcycle

that has a 270 degree crank pin offset and is liable to have an aero exhaust on

it based on almost nothing in my mind is a triumph yeah but we know it's a v-twin

the first hint was was v-twin I thought it was I thought it was just a twin no

first hint was v-twin that's why I said we were on the right track okay I think

it's I think it's a Moto Guzzi I don't know I do not think it's a small Moto

Guzzi I think it's a bigger I think it's one of the larger engines the way it

sounds right but I don't know enough about like which engines were used in

which models in the 2000s to know which one this is but I'm going Moto Guzzi

and I'm keeping mine generic well in the interest of keeping it fresh and

exciting and fun I'm gonna say it's a it's a it's a it's gotta be a motor

good team I don't know it's an arrow who it's not a Ducati it's not a Ducati

it's not it's not a triumph because we know it's a v-twin right and that's and

I'm thinking of like what brands are gonna have an arrow exhaust on them and

a Prelia v-twin but it doesn't sound like a Prelia v-twin to me doesn't sound

like a Prelia v-twin okay let's just hear the answer here we've dragged our

feet long enough before I look at the answer I would say one final note is

that a Moto Guzzi v-twin is typically air-cooled a little bit lopier not a high

performance engine which is why we're drawn to it as an answer okay I'm gonna

so that's a little bit newer than I guess my head was going but you know I

guess those those engines are an evolution forward in Euro 4 technology so a

Moto Guzzi v-85 TT for the audience that that might not be familiar is Moto

Guzzi's take on an adventure touring model this is a large upright

bug-eyed looking adventure touring bike Spencer Robert wrote a terrific article

about riding around on a motor good TV 85 TT I suppose we could put that up on

the screen right now or you could search common thread for V85 TT Spencer

Robert excellent article or whatever you search for and you'll find it anyway

that was a good one it was fun I I wish we could have been more specific but it

gets tricky when you get down there I'm proud of us for nailing down Moto

Guzzi not only am I proud of us but I'm going to apologize to producer Chase

because in the end it was his hint which included aero exhaust which allowed us

to you down to to go down a rabbit hole of like where I know aero exhausts are

manufactured the bikes that I know aero exhausts are manufactured for and the

bikes that they're not manufactured for so love that

thank you for sending in your engine sound for us to

play along to please do shoot us an email with your preferred high side low

side t-shirt and size as well as your mailing address and we will get you a

high side low side t-shirt out in the mail if you too want to play the engine

sound guessing game send us your clip we need the bike starting up idling a few

good revs and then idling again Zach likes it if you shut the bike off for

so we can hear it shutting down but you know now we're just splitting hairs so

congratulations Albert and thank you very much for participating in our

engine sound guessing game and speaking of giving away t-shirts it's time to do

the high side low side comment slash review as a reminder if we pick your

comment slash review slash criticism of us either as a comment on YouTube or

Spotify a Apple podcast review or an email sent to highside lowside at

result comm you too could win and probably will win a t-shirt of your

choice this one comes in from Lachlan Lachlan says and I quote I enjoyed

episode 11 of season 10 in that episode the fourth question you answered

related to whether or not you could safely reverse the direction of your

motorcycle tire on the rim slash wheel he goes on to compliment us on addressing

listeners question and prominent commercial manufacturer recommendations

blah blah blah Lachlan says I wanted to point out for the listeners benefit

that I don't know how to say the name of this tire company Spurge Motos E Motos

Motos Motos E Motos E Motos or Motos E I heard it pronounced both ways this

company sells a tire called the dual venture and the front tire specifically

I think is the one the Lachlan's talking about is bi directional in design so the

front tire you can swap it around and and you know flip it on the rim and have

it rotate the opposite direction and the company is totally fine with that and

this might seem like advice that is far too specific for the general audience

but I think well Spurge and I agree this is a great thing to call out that we

we we we did not know about that tire specifically and it's good to check

recommendations of each time manufacturer for stuff like this because

whether you're riding on a racetrack or riding an adventure bike or dirt bike

or whatever the rules might be different and the manufacturer might in fact

specify here's here's the the reason that I like this comment Lachlan just

because a manufacturer says that you can do something doesn't necessarily mean

that you should do something for anyone out there that's ever ridden an adventure

tire on the street and I've gone through a wide variety on different bikes and

using different brands they're because of the way that the knobs are set up and

they're they're you know a little bit more aggressive in their tread pattern

than a tickle street tire even if you have the tire set appropriately from a

from a psi standpoint for air inside the tire cupping tends to happen by cupping

I mean the knobs wear away at an angle where you can get a little bit of

chatter you can feel a little bit of the tire vibration in the handlebars the

more aggressive the adventure tire the more aggressive this happens and I say

that because I've got a set of Pirelli rally tires on my 890 right now and it's

pretty much the close thing you can get to put in a street legal dirt bike tire on

an adventure bike and when I first started riding around it it was like it

took me a second to get used to because it was like noticeably

uh uh Viby and I say this to say that if you if you start flipping adventure tires

around um after you've gotten some wear going uh I have no idea how this is going

to play out and feel for you um and so it's not necessarily something that we're

recommending uh that everybody out there do just because they say you can do it

if you're somebody that's sensitive to the vibration of the handlebar or how the

the the tire handles when you're at at a lean angle there can be something here

that is a bit off-putting fair enough fair enough think about I mean how often do

you rotate the tires in your car it's not like well at the halfway point you know

you get a 60,000 mile tire in your car around 30,000 miles swapping around and

see what happens by that point two of the four tires are pretty much going to be

smoked uh and and then you're gonna you're gonna feel it adversely um in in how

you handle it so you rotate your tires every 5,000 miles and if you have an

adventure bike tire where you're getting maybe four or five thousand miles out of

it I don't think most people uh are going to be pulling their wheels off every 600

miles exactly yeah that's fair enough but

it remains a good comment Lachlan and your eligibility to get a free high

side low side t-shirt also remains so please do send your preferred t-shirt

design size and mailing address to highsidelowsideatrevvzilla.com

Spurjo holy smokes did we talk about some hypotheticals today

hypothetical I talked about the hypothetical that that uh

Triumph had a v-twin you know because of the hypotheticals episode

and you didn't even know it you know you're not paying you're not you know

I think the only reason you're not more successful

at the engine sound guessing game is you're clearly not paying attention to

the hints close enough and I think it's because you're just so talented at it

you don't even need the hints so maybe maybe uh moving forward I'll

just read the hints to myself you play without the hints and we'll see if we

can't level the playing field a little bit here

right um okay don't biggest biggest takeaway of the day

Zach if you had to leave here today uh thinking about anything um what would

it be my big takeaway today is that Spurgeon Dunbar

would ride around on a jet bike and he thinks that Harley Davidson

is creating cutting-edge motorcycles I did not see either one of those things

coming I don't know if I'd ride around a jet

bike but like the the $100,000 flying drone looking

helicopter bike I'd play around with that I'd play around with that

good stuff okay well uh what about you Spurgeon what was your big takeaway today

what was your what was your big uh I I I just want to apologize uh

for my flub in the beginning I was actually writing a common tread article

uh we into the night and and part of what I was doing

for that was thinking about uh different ways that we here in the

northeast um survived the winter as the windshield was eight degrees

last night and my uh fire my fireplace was dying

down I could feel that wind pushing down my chimney and I was thinking I'm not

riding a motorcycle uh anytime this weekend um

and I was I was thinking about I was going down the rabbit hole of Onany

Sunday and I had Malcolm Smith on my brain and I was talking

earlier about airbags and I said Malcolm Smith crashed and you corrected me and

you said no you're talking about Malcolm Stewart and I was like

ugh somebody's gonna ride this into the comment section and be like what an

idiot um but I just wanted to say I was thinking about

watching Onany Sunday this weekend I believe it's the 55th anniversary

of of Onany Sunday coming out and uh Malcolm Smith

was a um was a prominent figure in that movie so if you're looking for something

to do and you know you're listening to this

podcast and I don't maybe by the time this one comes out it won't be as cold as

it is today uh but Onany Sunday is always a good

watch in the in the winter months well the next time I watch Onany Sunday I'm

going to imagine Malcolm Smith with dreadlocks that's all I have to say

picture him wearing an airbag you know and with that everybody we will let you

get on with the rest of your day or night and we'll hope to see you

next time on Highside Lowside thank you so much for hanging out with us

see y'all

you

About this episode

Exploring alternate motorcycle timelines, this episode dives into intriguing 'what if' scenarios like Germany winning WWII, Boeing entering the motorcycle market, and Harley-Davidson's potential different paths. The hosts also discuss the evolution of airbag technology, sharing insights from crash data analysis including a personal accident and a comparison to Marc Marquez's crash. They highlight how tech advancements provide valuable safety information and reshape rider perspectives. The conversation blends historical speculation with modern tech, offering a unique mix of storytelling and technical analysis.

ABS adventure bikes American flat track American V-twin BMW Buell cafe racer conglomerate cruiser crumple zone

Dodge Road Runner Kia EV4 Toyota Prius Toyota Supra Volkswagen Beetle

Original notes

In honor of "Back to the Future" turning 40, industry experts like Ryan Fortnine, Matt Oxley, and Ari Henning take a trip back in time with Zack & Spurg to explore five massive motorcycle "What if" scenarios:

What if Boeing built motorcycles?

What if Harley-Davidson abandoned "heritage" for "cutting-edge"?

How would a different World War II outcome have changed German and Japanese engineering?

What does a truly safe motorcycle look like?

If gas motorcycles were banned tomorrow, would the community survive on electric and hydrogen alone?

Plus, Zack analyzes his actual Alpinestars airbag crash data, comparing his 65-mph highside to Marc Marquez's infamous tumbles.

Check out more from RevZilla:

Common Tread: News, opinions, and written reviews
RevZillaTV: Bike reviews, How-To's, and product videos

Highside/Lowside - A Motorcycle Podcast

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