April 27, 2025
Motorcycle design is real
In this episode of the Throttle and Roast podcast, Niels Meersschaert delves into the multifaceted concept of motorcycle design. Unlike the matrix, it’s not a simulation, but motorcycle design is real. We can touch it, see it, feel it. Niels discusses how design transforms ideas into tangible forms, emphasizing that motorcycles are not just visual objects but also involve ergonomics, sound, and the overall riding experience. Unlike two-dimensional art, motorcycles offer a three-dimensional experience where various design elements can be appreciated from different perspectives. Niels highlights the significance of exposed engine designs and how they enhance the character of different brands, ultimately celebrating the unique experience of riding motorcycles in a world dominated by more antiseptic vehicle designs.
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00:00 - Introduction
01:36 - What is design?
02:38 - How does design apply to motorcycles?
04:08 - Why is motorcycle design different?
14:51 - Wrap up
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What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. Keanu Reeves has been in a lot of movies ranging from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Point Break Speed, The Matrix trilogy, and of course, the John Wick series.
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But Keanu is not just an actor.
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He's also a passionate motorcyclist. He loves bikes so much that he joined forces with Gard Hollinger to found Arch Motorcycles, a small volume motorcycle maker. And I've been watching the show Visionaries hosted by Keanu and Gard from Arch Motorcycles as they explore several creators who turn their visions into physical manifestations ranging from 3D printed rockets to the wonderful sounds of Akrapovic exhaust. And I'll share a link to the show in the show notes. Watching the series has gotten me thinking about design and what it means for motorcycles. So we'll talk about that in this episode So what is design? Well, put simply, design is the transformation from an idea into a manifestation of that idea.
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And when we think of motorcycles, it's a physical manifestation, almost like a sculpture. It's something real. We can touch, we can smell, we can hear, we can see the motorcycle. And when we think of that design applying into motorcycles, it's not just the visuals. Obviously, the appearance is a large part of it, but it's not the only bit. The ergonomics are part of the design. The auditory, the sound of the engine and of the exhaust is part of that design. And really the overall experience.
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When you get on the bike and you ride it, how it handles through the corners, the rumble of the bike, the shaking of the bike, all of that contributes to your feeling overall of the motorcycle. And that is part of the design.
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So how does design apply to motorcycles? Well, of course, there's the very simplistic appearance of the bike. And when we look at a motorcycle, that's usually the first experience that we have of considering the design of that bike. But the other aspects would include things like the ergonomics. When you sit on the bike, how does it feel? Where do the controls lay out from your body to the bike?
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What is the overall impression of the comfort and of the ability to adjust the controls and to manipulate the controls as you were riding? That's all part of the design. and of course the auditory. What does the bike sound like? You thumb that starter, the engine roars to life, and now that's going to have an impression on you just listening to the sound of that engine going through that exhaust. And finally, there's the experience of riding the bike. What is it like? That rumble of the shake of the engine is going to be a big part of that. And in today's world of almost antiseptic type of design of cars, where you're so far removed from the world through which you're traveling, they've gotten so much NVH taken out of the cars that you don't even realize you're driving a car with an engine anymore.
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Motorcycles are a hold out, if you will, to that old style of mechanical devices. And that experience is part of the design.
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So why is motorcycle design so different than other objects or even other vehicles?
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Well, let's look at a painting.
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A painting is definitely a visual manifestation of that idea, so it fits into that design definition that we had.
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But being two dimensional, the perspective of the image that is portrayed in that painting will always be the scene. We're not going to change our perspective of it at any moment. It is just it is what it is expressing.
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Whereas a motorcycle is three dimensional. as we move around the motorcycle, we will see different parts of the bike. The shapes and the apparent size of different parts of the motorcycle will be different as we move around it. In fact, we may reveal some parts of the bike as we move around. Maybe they were hidden by another part of the bike and they will now become revealed as we continue to move around the bike. And this is one of the things that visually is so wonderful about motorcycles is that there are so many different design elements that we can notice as you're coming around on the bike. And one of those that's really probably the most prevalent would be the engine. And this is where motorcycles are so different than other vehicles, like a car or truck. The engines hidden away in an engine bay with the hood over it. Whereas on a motorcycle that engine is exposed and it's often a large part of the design. And in fact, some engine layouts are so strongly associated with a particular brand, just hearing the engine layout will oftentimes make you think of a particular brand. So as an example, if I say V-twin, you're probably going to think of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. If I say boxer twin, you're probably going to be thinking about a BMW.
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but if you think of a transverse v-twin, this is a v-twin that instead of it running in line with the motorcycle, the two cylinders are sticking out on the side. somewhat similar to a boxer twin, but this is a v-twin now. Well, that's typically associated with MotoGuzzi.
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They've been doing that design for more than 50 years. So there are some particular engine layouts that when you think of or see that particular engine layout, you're like, Oh, that's that particular bike. It's such a strong connection. course, there's other things, not just the engine that's playing a visual impact on to the design of a motorcycle. Think of things like the controls, the handlebars, the levers, the pegs.
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They can change them and give a completely new look to the motorcycle. So think of a bike with ape hangers or beach bars.
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And now you switch it to having clip ons. It will look completely different from one another. Or do the opposite.
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Take a sport bike that has clip ons on it and put on hangers.
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And this is the really fascinating thing. If you look at a lot of motorcycles in some of the manufacturers lineups, for example, some Harleys, a lot of the different quote unquote models are really it's the same bike with just different handlebars or different, you know, layouts of configuration of like, let's say, tires or wheels or stuff like that. It's basically the same exact bike.
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They just change a couple of elements and it looks completely different. BMW does the same thing with the R Nine-T line.
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This is all one bike and all they've done is just changed a little bit of what handlebars are on it. Or maybe they changed the fork, and the bike looks completely different. So these small little aspects of the motorcycle can give a radically different view of what you think of the bike visually appearing as. The other one that you want to look at is things like the seats. These are a big part of the visual design on a motorcycle. And unlike in a car where yes, a car of course, will have seats but you're not looking at them as you're driving along. You're really looking at maybe the dashboard.
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So they're not really part of the visual design. Whereas on a motorcycle, that's one of the first things you see. You see that engine, you see the seat right above it. And that's part of the visual design. that's why they are such a part of what we consider when we think of that particular bike. of course, not every bit of design is so perfectly clean and separate from one another. There's oftentimes tensions in design.
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And I want to talk about a few of these different tensions. So the first one is let's talk about a tension of visual design and ergonomics. So those same seats that we talked about, you can have seats that look amazing in the showroom, but once you get out and start riding the bike, it's not so comfy. And this is part of that tension is we want to make a seat that looks great and will be appealing for you when you're sitting in the showroom But it's not going to be very helpful when you actually get up to ride.
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And sometimes those seats will actually play a little bit of a almost cheating ergonomic role.
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Maybe if you're not as tall, they'll make a seat that has a very low seat height and therefore you can straddle the bike in the showroom. It'll feel like it's really good. But then when you get out to a ride, you're like, Oh my God, this seat sucks and I need to get a new one. So there's that tension of that visual design of a seat and the ergonomic or comfort that that seat is going to provide as you're riding. Same thing with the handlebar designs.
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They create that image that can be appealing, but they can put the body into some odd position.
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So some hangars, for example, you've got your arms way up in the air and your shoulders are now starting to get a little tired from holding your arms way up there for so long as you're riding along. And the same thing in the opposite direction. If you get into clip ons, your hands are not going to be down.
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All of your weight is on your wrist. It really helps when you need that extra weight on the front wheel for sport bike handling, but it's not going to be the most comfortable position.
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So some of these designs will have a tension in terms of that ergonomic comfort for what you're trying to do on the bike.
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The other one I want to talk about is this sort of almost describe it as almost like a costume that some motorcycles like to wear. And what I mean by this is it's that tension between the appearance and the utility. And a very common situation for this would be, you know, two examples of it. One of them would be a low end motorcycle that has a lot of sportbike style cladding on it.
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It is not a sport bike by any means. It may have really cheap suspension. The engines are super particularly powerful, but it looks like a sport bike. So you want the appearance of it even though it can't actually ride like a true proper sport bike would. Same thing goes for ADV bikes, which have become probably the most popular category today. A ton of manufacturers are producing them, but in realizing that many of the riders aren't actually taking their ADV motorcycles off road, they're really giving the ADV appearance. But without having any of the chops to back it up by actually be able to support you riding off road. And this is probably quite similar to a SUVs here in the United States as SUVs have easily surpassed cars as being the most popular design style of cars today. And in the early days, an SUV was really just a truck that had a permanent cap thrown on the back. And that was really fundamentally with what they were. So they were a truck chassis. They had the suspension that supported that. So it could really do a lot of offroad. It was very capable for that. But as we continued to progress, people wanted to have a little bit of a smoother ride, a little bit less bouncy. They started basing the SUVs on car chassis and they became a crossover. So they look like an SUV. But don't take them on any sort of off road because the suspension travels for not really all that far. They're not really meant for that sort of heavy duty riding along. And we get the same thing with motorcycles where the outward appearance of the bike and its capabilities are in tension with one another.
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And that's actually a good segway to get into when we talk about different design styles or where we have similar designs, it we usually group them into a style of bike. So for example, a standard motorcycle. This is the thing. If you were to ask a little kid to draw a picture of a motorcycle, they're going to draw something that probably looks quite similar to a standard motorcycle and have a couple of wheels. It'll have some handlebars, it'll have the seat, and it's basically pretty nondescript and very basic in terms of its appearance. But if you have something that has a lot of body cladding on it, it's going to probably be thought of as being a sport bike. It probably has clip ons or at least very low handlebars that you can have a little bit more of a position over the front end of the bike. Your feet are probably tucked up a little bit higher and they're usually behind you and that's going to be part of the design aesthetic, is that it's going to look that really sort of, you know, you're crouched over the bike and just in an attack position. That's the visual appeal of that bike.
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On the opposite end of the spectrum, you might look at something like a cruiser, which is much more of a laid back sort of style. They tend to be more of a older design aesthetic. So they look like things from old bikes, maybe from the thirties, forties, fifties. And that's part of the design aesthetic that is so appealing for a cruiser often tends to be very large. that's the other part of it is that there's a presence that you don't have on some of the smaller bikes you might see in like a some standards or some sport bikes ADV bikes, of course, will be very tall. You're going to have that visual presence that just this bike looks tall.
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I mean, I always referred to or had friends refer to my ADV bikes as my high horses because they were so tall compared to other motorcycles that were out there. Now. Dual sports are probably a little bit closer to an ADV, but of course they're going to be smaller visually looking than an ADV bike would be. So they will still be distinct. And of course, a scooter is going to be really distinct with that step through design. Doesn't look like a lot of other type of motorcycle design, so there's a lot of design visual variation within the motorcycle type of bikes that we see out there. And that's part of why the design I think is just such a fascinating part of motorcycles.
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So we've discussed how design applies to motorcycles and why motorcycle design is different than other vehicles.
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We also explored some tensions in design in motorcycles and how some similar designs are oftentimes grouped into styles.
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Now, as someone who loves all motorcycles, I have bikes in nearly every category, so I appreciate aspects of each one of them. So my question for you is what is your favorite design element on a motorcycle? Share your thoughts through the text, The show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttle and roast dot com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening.
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I'll talk to you next week.
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