2015: Bike-urious Year in Review

2015 marks the 3rd year of Bike-urious, so let’s take a look back at what’s happened in the last 12 months (and a whole bunch of posts) of this poky little motorcycling website! In fact, let’s have some fun right off the bat…leave a comment below with your estimate of how many posts were shared on Bike-urious this year and the person with the closest guess will get a Bike-urious t-shirt!

To start off, Bike-urious had visitors from all over the world – 212 countries, to be exact.

The biggest news (and presumably how a lot of you new subscribers found this site) was a quick feature on the YouTube channel of Jay Leno’s Garage!

We also created our first video review:

And in response to feedback from last year’s reader survey (prepare yourself – a new one’s coming up for 2016), I expanded into posts that weren’t just bikes for sale:
The Re-Opening of the Petersen
Trading a laptop for a truck on Craigslist
We started playing “Guess That Bike”
Continuing our absurd quest to tackle the Baja 1000
Hosting the 1st Annual Beater Olympics
Started giving away stuff, like this Aerostich Messenger Bag
Photos from the Venice Vintage Motorcycle Rally
10 Excellent Motorcycle Books, courtesy of Gregor Halenda – and here’s part 2.
Photos from the Quail Motorcycle Gathering
Started previewing upcoming auctions – the most recent of which is the Bonhams Las Vegas auction happening in early January.
Ride report from a New Year’s Eve spent in La Paz

I also got to share the story of some very cool motorcyclists:
Sam Roberts, Ujeni Motors
Aniket Vardhan, Musket V-Twin
Travis Scott, The Nimbus Nut
Bob Kelly, Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club
John Root, Geekbobber
Jeremy Malman, Worth Motorcycles

Oh yeah, and I started selling shirts. Ring in the new year with style (or be a good guesser below)!

With all that said, Bike-urious is about featuring interesting motorcycles for sale. So here are the 5 most popular bikes I shared this year, in terms of page hits:

1. 2015 Royal Enfield Musket
This is probably not a surprise. Aniket Vardhan’s incredible custom Enfield with a V-Twin engine he designed and built himself is one of the coolest motorcycles I’ve ever seen, let alone had the good fortune to feature. He’s been chugging along selling engines, parts, and complete bikes all over the world! Last time I checked in with him, he was running a sale so that you could get a complete build done for less than $10K plus the donor bike.

2. 1976 Kott Motorcycles Honda CB550
This bike wasn’t tremendously popular when I first featured it, but people are always searching for Kott builds so the views came all year long. It was listed twice on eBay but was eventually pulled off, final sale price unknown.

3. 1980 Honda CM400T – Winner of People’s Choice at the Venice version of the Deus Boundless Enthusiasm Bike Build Off.
This build was definitely different, and attracted a lot of eyeballs for it! Bidding on eBay only got to $755 or so as America might not be ready for Bozu bikes yet, but I’ve heard this bike has since sold separately and may be taking a 500+ mile road trip to its next owner that I might have to tag along for…

4. 1949 Indian Scout Custom by Analog Motorcycles – class winner at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering.
Also known as the Continental Scout, this beautiful build from Analog Motorcycles takes the engine from a ’49 Indian Scout and surrounds it in sculpted bodywork. It won the Custom Modified class at the 2015 Quail Motorcycle Gathering.

5. 1991 Bimota Tesi Project
This bike wasn’t even running when I featured it, but that didn’t stop this project of a Tesi from getting clicks. After 30 bids on eBay, it sold for $13,101. I hope the new owner brought it back to life!

With that said, page views aren’t everything! So here’s my personal top 5 of featured bikes that didn’t make the above list, in no particular order:
1. The Enterprise.
The Enterprise was Orley Raymond Courtney’s dream, an attempt to create a cruiser for everyone. But in a world where a Vincent lack Lightning would set you back $1,800, the Enterprise cost $2,500 – and you still had to supply the engine! Just 3 were made.

2. 1966 BMW R69S Hot Rod
Take a R69S (already one of BMW’s most notable models of all time), then add a R75/5 motor that’s been given a big bore kit up to 1,040cc. Then throw in Dell’orto carbs, Dunstall silencers, a Sig Serson cam, R90S clutch, Uli electronic ignition, and that beautiful luggage, and you’ve got yourself a beautiful sleeper. Commence drooling. The bike was relisted a few times before it was pulled from eBay for good, the highest that bidding got was $15,500.

3. 1974 Ducati 750SS Green Frame.
This is kind of an obvious choice, but I still can’t get over the fact that this was a.) a one owner bike and b.) it had avoided any sort of restoration. Look at that original paint! After 29 bids on eBay, it sold for $120,000. While I’m talking about a Ducati 750SS, the California Hot Rod/Old Blue should get a special bonus mention here. But with an original asking price of $1 Million, you could argue it wasn’t really “for sale” this year. For what it’s worth, bidding on that auction got up to $250,000, which didn’t meet reserve.

4. 2010 Van Veen OCR 1000
Van Veen was a Dutch importer of Kreidler who decided he’d expand into big bikes by developing his own with rotary power. His prototype was a Guzzi V7 frame that he stuffed a Mazda rotary engine into! Just 38 were built, though in 2011 a new run of 10 was created using the original tooling. This is one of the final 10 – bidding got up to $20,099 but that wasn’t enough to meet reserve. Maybe the $115,000 MSRP of the final 10 had something to do with that!

5. 1983 Honda CB1100F Restomod
The CB1100F is already cool, but this bike is at a whole different level thanks to the restomod work, which included Ohlins shocks, RC51 forks, Wiseco pistons, Keihin flat slide carbs, Peter Schule headers, and more. After 39 bids on eBay, this beauty sold for $15,099.

Bike-uriousity Finders:
You’ve probably seen a line at the end of many posts: “This bike-uriousity brought to you by”, with the name of whomever found that interesting bike for sale. In 2015, these five readers submitted the most bikes that were shared with everyone:
David N – 94
Jim R – 58
Bill K – 44
Russ A – 37
Todd B – 26
David gets a $50 Aerostich gift certificate for his efforts! Merry Belated Christmas.

That pretty much wraps it up. I hope you’ve enjoyed the last year of Bike-urious, and that you’ll enjoy the next year, as well! Going forward, expect to see some new faces in addition to Tom Wacker and JG Nelson to help share more cool bikes for sale, as well as more posts on other topics.

If I haven’t met you yet, don’t hesitate to drop me a line at abhi@bike-urious.com. I always love learning about the people read Bike-urious and it helps me do a better job with the site. As always, thanks so much for reading – your support means a lot. To a wonderful 2016!
-Abhi