Top Ten Ugliest Motorcycles Of All Time

Motorcycles are a very personal statement, what one wo/man loves, another can't stand the look of

Everyone makes top-ten lists of the motorbikes they love, and for me, I doubt I could actually do it (though if I did, it would be full of MVs and Ducatis). So instead of torturing myself, I decided to present my top ten ugliest. If you own one of these, please remember this is my list and no offense is intended. However, you do have my admiration for being able to stomach these machines …

In no particular order.

HD Road Glide Ultra

I have to confess, I'm no real lover of Harley Davidsons, but I'd never go so far as to say they're ugly (except the one @teramuto owns, obviously), but this is wrong. It's a big bike, and they've done nothing in the design to disguise the fact you're riding a very large armchair down the highway. For me, the worst part is the headlights - they look like a crab squinting at the sun.

Buell Thunderbolt S3T

Buell was never really famous for making good looking bikes, and even though we all acknowledge this, the S3T looks like someone really went over and above to make us remember this point forever. Highlights include the pipe that looks like the Hulk tied it around the engine and a half-fairing that was last seen in 1954.

Ducati Multistrada 1100S

Compiling this list, if there was one marque I never thought would be on it, it would be Ducati. They tend to make really nice looking bikes (OK, there are exceptions, but they tend to look average rather than bad). And then I remembered a trip to Calgary and renting one of these. The engine was quite nice and it rode fairly well, but even today, looking at it makes me nauseous. It's that fairing. What were they thinking? Especially when you turn the bars and it kind of splits in half. Yuck.

Bimota Tesi 3-D

In some ways, I feel guilty about posting this. It was never really more than a prototype, and in some regards, it does look stunning in it's use of technology that never quite made it. But, it's like a car wreck in that you know it's wrong to stare but you do anyway. It's the trellis at the front and rear, and the way the front is just hovering in mid-air as there are no front forks. It's an overbite worthy of a Simpsons character. I hear the Bimota ride well but didn't become popular for a reason.

Honda v45 Magna

The Honda V45 is one bike I contemplated keeping off the list. It's so retro now that it's almost cool. Almost. Trying to mimic custom cruisers, it somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts. By all accounts, it's a great motor, but the giant rad and ugly pipes manage to make it look somewhat like a parts-bin special. Lest we forget that brown paint job… No motorcycle should ever be brown.

Honda Valkyrie Rune

I can just imagine the scene at the Honda design meeting for the Valkyrie Rune. Someone in management said:

"Our bikes aren't big enough. Let's build a bike using a Honda truck engine". "Great", someone else must have replied. "I watched Akira last night. I think I remember what that bike looked like".

And thus was born the Valkyrie Rune. I've no idea how much it weighed, but the rear fender alone must be 50lbs of steel. Thankfully (and perhaps obviously given the high price) not many were sold.

KTM 690

KTM has come a long way. Bikes like the new Adventure 1190 and forthcoming Super Duke 1290 are starting to look amazing. But some of their less recent efforts have failed. I couldn't quite decide between the RC8 and the 690 but this won out as the RC8 is so much fun to ride. Ostensibly an off-roader for the road (or Supermoto as we now call them) it manages to look huge and weighty. And that beak? I can't look at it without thinking of the Spy vs Spy cartoon.

Suzuki RE-5

Like the Tesi-3D this is a bike that's not entirely run of the mill. Based around a free-revving Wankel rotary, the RE5 wasn't short of power. Sadly, it didn't really succeed in the market. Perhaps it was the radiator off of a Supermarine Spitfire that caused that, or the fact that each machine came with a free thermos flask welded to the headlight?

Suzkuki Hayabusa

The Hayabusa was built for the hyper-sports crowd and solely to secure bragging rights on the "fastest production bike" crown. Sure, it's quick but it looks like a nice, svelt sport bike that's been force-fed chocolate cake for a few months. The name Hayabusa means peregrine falcon in Japanese. It looks more like a goose kept for Foie Gras. Or a corpulent penguin having a lie-down.

Victory Vision

I know these are popular, at least in North America. I know they're supposed to ride really well and I know their owners love them, but please, it looks like it was designed by someone that designed cars in the 1930s. It's almost as if the designer was afraid of edges. Maybe I'm wrong, but I instantly assume everyone who rides this secretly wants to be Flash Gordon.

And the winner is?

I've made fun of a few machines here, and as I said earlier, if yours is among my list, Â then I apologize. I could easily have added a few more like the Philip Stark designed Aprilia Moto6.5, despite it's somewhat "iconic" status.

In all fairness, you probably dislike my bike (Tiger 1200 Explorer) but one thing we can all agree on - we'd all take any of the ugly bikes over a Chevy Cavalier or a Ford Focus.

Eat Sleep Ride it doesn't matter what you ride or how ugly the motorbike is.