I’m not sure I agree with the notion that the manufacturers drive the fashion/agenda.
I’ve been riding bikes and therefore going to bike meets for 40 years and it has always been the case that guys stand around talking about upgrades, whether that’s in performance or other. There’s also been the biggest crowd gathered round the newest bike with the latest developments.

Humans have always been drawn towards progression - even in the dark ages there were advancements.

Any company, no matter what they do, needs to make a profit and one of the best ways to do that is: pile them high and sell them cheap.
I’m pretty sure that Honda makes more money in the 2nd world from small bikes than it does from big bikes in the 1st world. If that’s true then Honda would be pushing small bikes in the 1st world….but, up until now, there has only been a small market for them so big bikes it is. I’m not including scooters in this but the high sales of them goes someway towards enhancing my point.

I believe it was the, unplanned, success of the 411 Himalayan that is driving the market for smaller bikes. The Himmie was designed for the Indian market but took off around the world and rightly so. So this penchant is being driven by the market and not the manufacturers.

Most fashions: music, clothing, food etc come up from the streets and are taken up and watered down by corporations for the mass public - I believe motorcycles are the same.
People were customising bikes long before manufacturers were producing cruisers. They were tuning and racing bikes long before as well…… and they were travelling round the world on standard bikes long before the Adventure Bike came along.

I kind of agree with some of what u r saying but u have to ask where has the Suv suddenly appeared from ? Who actually needs one if they were honest. Adv bikes are a result of clever marketing.......sports bikes were dead in the water so suddenly we have these things entering the market . Suddenly you now have mini sports bikes appearing as well.........The himmy is a hit no doubt about that but its small fry compared to other models .

Like everything, Chris, they came from demand.
SUVs, 4x4s etc…. I remember working in Chelsea in the 90s when 4x4s were becoming popular, known then as Chelsea tractors.
I asked a few women why they drove them and they said that the roads were getting so busy that they wanted a car that allowed them to see above the traffic and commanded presence on the road - the fact that they were also expensive acted as a deterrent for other cars to bump into them - their small cars were full of bumps and scratches.
Once a few wealthy people buy something, it starts a fashion.

The Adventure bike scene was started by E & C, I think we all agree on that - again rich and famous people.

I can’t find the research so maybe wrong but I do believe that for 1 year the 411 was the biggest selling, large capacity motorcycle in the world. It was certainly the second biggest selling Adventure bike in the UK for a while and the UK is a tiny market.

There’s a lot of talk about cheap Chinese bikes and the demise of the motorcycle- big bikes, Japanese bikes European bikes etc..
The world is in a down turn at the moment which could turn into a global depression. Belts are being tightened. But economics is cyclical, who’d have thought in the early 90s that BMW would be a massive motorcycle manufacturer.

With heavy sanctions china could easily go down the pan. No one knows what the world will be like in 20 years - speculation.
I’ll be buying an Indian bike, rather than Chinese - just in case hahaha.

Wow Bob, I think you ticked off most of the cliches there but I have an alternate view.
It is often said that most big bike riders, and especially Beemer riders, are all posers who park up outside Starbucks and can’t really handle their oversized bikes.
I ride a 1200 GSA so I’ll give you a different view.
I don’t know you or your riding habits but I ride multi months long trips over mountains and desserts in far flung countries with sometimes dreadful roads and tracks and I don’t see many bikes doing big trips that aren’t big.

I ride two up with my wife, one trip being 27,000 miles over eight and a half months and virtually every traveller that we meet was on a big Beemer.

Big bikes are just marketing? No. On the trip I just mentioned we wore out one front suspension seal. Nothing else broke and the dealer replaced the seal for free as we were still under warranty. This was a trip that used up six tyres, two front and four back. Nothing else broke, two up.
Before that trip, I’d asked my BMW service boss if I should take some spare brake and clutch cables as I’d read they break after prolonged use.
He said he’d never come across a broken cable.

Lastly, in Chile you will either need a big tank or a supplementary tank as gaps of 200 miles between petrol pumps is common.

The fact that BMW make great bikes for serious travel doesn’t mean BMW or their riders are tossers. That’s like saying Aston Martin drivers are all tw@ts if they don’t thrash the pants off their Astons every weekend.

Try caning around the alps on a big, sit up straight Beemer for a week and then try it on a 350.

The adventure bike scene was well established in the era of the 100GS, 1100GS and 1150GS a good ten years or more before E&C came along. UKGSer is a good historical site for adventure riding but even then there's not much before 2005. It's not so well documented as not many people were on the Internet, even in the 1990s.

(Though I do have a video shot in the mid 1980s of me using an acoustic coupler on a transatlantic dial up call to log on at 300 baud to a node in the States.)

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Utter, utter nonsense. What about the many riders, particularly from Germany and France, and to a smaller extent from late to the game English speaking areas setting off on big, beyond Starbucks, trips on bikes like the BMW R80g/s (first sold in 1981) or Yamaha xt500 (released in the mid 1970s) to name just 2 very popular models? There's an entire universe of bike travel going back to well beyond when the 2 lovies were even born. It really didn't all start with Ewen and his unemployed carpet fitter mate

Much closer to the mark, but still no cigar.


Regarding the whole big/little bike argument. Big western manufacturers will sell what the market thinks it wants, based the junk marketing the punters will swallow.

These manufacturers make the most money on after sales offerings like servicing. And on finance plans because new bike buyers can't/ don't want to afford to pay the full price in cash today.

In the next 20/25 years, the "western" bike market will be dead, along with their current baby boomer customers. KTM, it seems, has chosen to push up the daisys first. I predict huge discounts soon to get their unsold '23 and '24 vintage motors out of the door and stave off bankruptcy for a little while at least.

Based on primary research last year in India and South East Asia, the future of biking per se is in small bikes of 100 to 200 or so cc in Asia, also where they're built. Everyone, unless mega rich by local standards, is on motorised or electric 2 wheels.

Western birth rates are going through the floor, young westerners don't ride and the bike riding boomers won't be around much longer. At the other end of the spectrum e.g., India's population is now 1.45 bn, up 50% in the last 25 years.

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TBS.com

Absolutely, and it goes more than 50 years further back than the R80GS or the XT500.

Early Harley-Davidson models were designed for dirt roads as that was what most roads in America were like at the time. Hence the introduction of the 1919 Sport Model which was designed for 'rough stuff'.

Round about 1920 HD introduced a military model for the US Army, and even the BSA M20 ridden by my father in the Royal Signals in WWII predates BMW's GS range by over 30 years.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Indeed. My correction above was very much aimed at Mr/Ms/They Flop.

One of my Glaswegian grandfather's stories of WW2 was soon after DDay, riding a "borrowed" BMW bike through German lines from Normandy to Brittany to see his wife and son for the first time. Ernest was one of the first British Commandos on Sword beach very early on 6th June '44. (He didn't have time to hang out chatting to the Germans at Ouistreham as Pegasus bridge down the road needed holding).

On his ride westwards, at one point, he ended up in a ditch after a Spitfire straffed him! So kinda off road for a few yards

Usually he didn't talk much about the war. The guy left more than footprints on the beach at Dunkirk

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TBS.com

Those would both be classed as small and lightweight trail-capable bikes in today's market (kinda like the Scram 440 now), and neither of them were advertised as machines with which to cross continents with factory luggage solutions as an optional extra.

Long Way Round really sold the idea to the masses that in order to go seriously long distance you needed a 250kg+ 70hp+ bike with heated cup holders simply because it was shown on the BBC and around the world. That's when the idea of motorcycle adventure riding in it's currently marketed and packaged form entered the zeitgeist, to the point where even my Mum knew what it meant.

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...

I was just going to share these 2 pictures, but the system requires me to write words. So I have.

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TBS.com

Fair enough, you've got me there

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FreeBSD fan since before it was cool ...