Tag: Motorcycle collection

A Quick Petersen Stop…

By Joe Berk

The architecture is visually arresting, riveting our attention as soon we spot the Petersen Automotive Museum.  It had a been a few years since I visited the place, I had not expected what I saw, but I knew it was the Petersen as soon as it came into view.  Located on Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile (home to several museums, surrounded by incredible wealth, and one of LA’s toniest neighborhoods), the Petersen is a distinctive Los Angeles landmark.

The Petersen Automotive Museum.  This cell phone photo through my Subie’s window doesn’t do the architecture justice.  It is a magnificent building.  I’d like to come back at night and photograph it again.

On my earlier visits to the Petersen Museum, the building that housed it positively boring from the outside.  Built in 1962 as a department store, it was a big block of nearly windowless concrete.  The size and the windowless aspect appealed to billionaire publisher Robert E. Petersen.  It was big enough to house Petersen’s collection, and the lack of windows would protect the sensitive finishes of classic and custom automobiles from the harsh southern California sun.

Our visit to the Petersen this day was to be a quick one, as I was on a mission.  With an assignment for a Motorcycle Classics magazine “Destinations” piece featuring the Bunch motorcycle collection (on display at the Petersen through the end of March), I wanted to get in early before the Museum became too crowded, grab a bunch of photos, and be on my way.  We succeeded.  We were in and out in exactly 25 minutes.  Click, click, and click again went the Nikon D810 and its boat anchor 16-35mm lens.  Click a bunch more times, and we were on our way to lunch at Canter’s Deli (more on that in a bit).

The Petersen Museum underwent an extensive $125 million remodeling in 2015, which treated the existing building as a chassis and created a stunning stainless steel ribbon body over it.  The flowing ribbons and their brilliant bright red background create an impression of wind tunnel airflow over a streamlined automobile.  As I read those words, my description sounds kind of over the top and maybe a bit hokey, but let me tell you:  the architecture works.  The unmistakable and instant impression is one of power and speed.  I couldn’t wait to get inside.

The wonderment began even before we entered the building.  We spotted a neo-vintage ’66 ivory white Mercedes displayed near the entrance.  It’s a gasoline (not diesel) powered 250 SE Coupe with an incredible 1,384,563 miles on the clock.  The late original owner, Jane Rice Pinner, drove it everywhere, and you can take that “everywhere” adjective literally.  Ms. Pinner, you see, was a world traveler.  She shipped the car to the different countries she visited, and drove it wherever she went when she arrived.  It’s a cool approach to adventure, and it’s probably one that required big bucks.  But Wilshire Avenue’s Miracle Mile is dripping in big bucks ambience.  We were impressed, and we hadn’t made it into the Museum yet.

1000-horsepower, 44.8 liters of aircraft engine, and 200+mph in 1927. The Sunbeam Slug is drop- dead gorgeous technoir engineering.

Once inside, a stunning Sunbeam land speed record machine again riveted our attention.  It’s a 1000-horsepower monster, nicknamed “the Slug,” and it’s powered by two humongous 22.4-liter Matabele V12 aircraft engines (one in the front, and one in the rear).  With the two V12’s combined 1000 horsepower, the Slug was designed to hit 200 mph, and in 1927, it did so on the sands of Daytona Beach.  The Slug touched 203.79 mph under the skillful touch of Sir Henry Segrave in (get this) 1927.  Oh, boy, do they ever have cool things at the Petersen.

But our focus was on motorcycles, and specifically, the Bunch collection.  It was up to the second floor for us, and wow, there they were.  About 25 early 1900s motorcycles (I’ll provide an exact count in the next blog) had me in digital photography heaven.  I’m going to portray these in the ExNotes blog in a different way.   We’ll feature one motorcycle per blog and run the blogs around others currently scheduled for publication.   They’ll start sometime next year.

The engine room of an extremely rare Indian V-twin hill climb motorcycle. Watch for more on this magnificent moto in our next Petersen blog.

After our quick stop at the Petersen, we drove north another mile on Fairfax Avenue to one of my favorite LA restaurants:  Canter’s Deli.  Matzo ball soup, a kasha knish, a corned beef Reuben, and I was in heaven.

Canter’s delights. Matzo ball soup and a kasha knish. If you know, you know.

Stay tuned, my friends.  There are more Bunch stories and more stunning photos inbound.

Getting to One

Joe Gresh raised an interesting topic with his recent blog on motorcycle quantity.   You know, how many motorcycles are too many?  That blog got a lot of hits and tons of comments on Facebook.  It seems like he struck a nerve.

The most motorcycles I ever owned at one time was five, which pales in comparison to Gresh’s shop full of motos and maybe the collections of a few other people I know.  When my collection hit that peak, I had a Triumph Daytona 1200, a Harley Heritage Softail, a Suzuki TL1000S, a Honda CBX, and a KLR 650.  That was about 20 years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to my collection and no central theme guiding the contents of my fleet.  I just bought what I liked.  In those days I had more money than brains, but don’t interpret that to mean I was rich.  I just never had a lot of brains.  Most folks who know me recognize that pretty quickly.

My Harley Softail in the muddy plains outside Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. There’s a kitchen sink in there somewhere.
The Triumph Tiger. Good, but tall and very heavy. It was essentially a sport bike with excess suspension travel and ADV cosmetics.
Me with a buddy currently in the witness protection program, and my Honda CBX. It was a surprisingly competent touring motorcycle.
The Triumph Speed Triple. One of my buddies nicknamed it the Speed Cripple, which became true for me.
Ah, the yellow locomotive. My Triumph Daytona 1200. Delightfully crude and fast. I loved this bike and I rode the 2005 Three Flags Classic on it.
Turning sportbikes into touring machines…my TL1000S somewhere in Baja. This was a seriously fast motorcycle.

I seemed to hover around that number (five, that is) for a while.  Other bikes moved in to displace one or more of the above, most notably a Triumph Tiger and then a Triumph Speed Triple.  Those were fun, but they’ve gone down the road, too.

One of my favorite former motorcycles for real world adventure riding…the Kawasaki KLR 650 in its natural surroundings (Valle de los Cirios in Baja).

Which one did I enjoy riding most?  That’s easy.  It was the KLR 650.  The KLR 650 was the bike that led me on an arc toward smaller motorcycles, like the CSC RX3 and then a TT250.  I was a bit player implementing Steve Seidner’s decision to bring those motorcycles to America.  The 250s were a lot of fun.  I sold off all the big bikes and only rode 250s for a few years, then I fell in love with the new Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor when it hit the market, and suddenly I was back up to three.

But three, for me, was too many.  I haven’t been riding much in the last few years for a lot of reasons.  The pandemic put a dent in any big travel plans (YMMV, and that’s okay), and constantly moving the battery tender around and cleaning the TT250’s jets was getting old.  I couldn’t move anything in my garage because there was so much stuff crammed in there, and I had to park the TT250 under the rear porch awning.  I don’t have a separate workshop area and I don’t pour concrete (I don’t have Mr. Gresh’s talents, but even if I did, it looks like too much work to me), so hanging on to a big motorcycle fleet was not in the cards.

My TT250. I’ve ridden it in Baja, too. It sold the day after I placed an ad for it a couple of weeks ago, and at the asking price. This bike held its value well.

Badmouthing Facebook has become trendy, but I’ll tell you that Facebook Marketplace came to the rescue.  I already had a ton of photos of my motorcycles and whipping up ads for the TT250 and the RX3 literally took only seconds.  I checked Kelly Blue Book values, picked prices only marginally below what a dealer would charge, and both bikes sold quickly.  The TT250 sold the day after I listed it; the RX3 took one additional day.

All the China haterbator keyboard commandos said Chinese bikes had no resale value.  Like everything else they posted, they were wrong.  The haters said Chinese bikes were unreliable (they were wrong), the haters said you couldn’t get parts for them (they were wrong), the haters said they were built with slave labor (I’ve been in the factories, and they were wrong), and they said they had no resale value (and they were wrong about that, too).  My 6-year-old RX3 with 20,000 miles on the clock went for 69% of its original MSRP, and my 5-year-old TT250 with 3,000 miles went for 74% of its original MSRP.  That’s pretty good, I think. And both sold right away.  Not that I was in a hurry to sell.  I probably could have held out for more.

My current sole ride (or is that soul ride?), the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 on Baja’s Highway 1 south of Ensenada.  At this point in my life, one motorcycle is enough.  Your mileage may vary.

So I’m down to one motorcycle, and that’s the Enfield.  For me, at this point in my life, one motorcycle is the right number (your mileage may vary).  I’m on to other “how many” questions now, like how many guns are too many, and how many bicycles are too many.  The answer to both of those questions is something south of my current number, but those are topics for future blogs.

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There’s lots of Baja photos in this blog, and for good reason.  Baja is one of the best places on the planet for poking around on a motorcyle. Check out our updated Baja page, and pick up your copy of Moto Baja!

How Many Motorcycles Are Too Many Motorcycles?

Here at ExhaustNotes.us we’ve been discussing the possibility that we may have more motorcycles than anyone actually needs. Personally, I have more motorcycles than I can afford to insure. I can’t ride them legally so the bikes sit in my shed gathering dust. Berk, who has a much smaller shed, is taking aggressive action on the issue by selling off some unused bikes. It’s inspired me to do the same. But which bikes? How many motorcycles do I need? I don’t want to end up one of those hoarders who die leaving Meacham’s auction house to pawn my junk off to the other hoarders.

For the sake of argument lets say X equals the number of motorcycles that your ability and status in life can keep maintained and running. Besides remorseless economics and mechanical talent there are the bikes that have a sentimental meaning to you that goes beyond reason and harsh reality. We’ll call that value Y. For example, you may never get that Norton put back together but if the fact that it exists in your shed brings you happiness why am I judging?

If all we had to deal with was X and Y we could plot the number of owned motorcycles on a simple two-dimensional graph but life is not lived in two dimensions. Reality demands that we consider Z, with Z being the amount of space you have to store the motorcycles. If the value of Z, Y and X were infinite you could collect all the motorcycles. I mean all of them. No one else could own one because you would have the entire world’s output of motorcycles. The problem is X, Y and Z are never infinite; even if they were and you owned them all who would you ride with? Nobody.You’d be a lonely, bitter soul. By simple logic we have determined an upper limit on motorcycle ownership: all of them minus one for your riding buddy.

Since this is a motorcycle blog I will assume the readers like motorcycles. Hence, pandering to the mob dictates that one motorcycle is the lower limit on motorcycle ownership because a story on motorcycle ownership that didn’t involve motorcycle ownership cannot exist in the intellectual vacuum of the Internet.

There are a vast number of motorcycles between one and all of the motorcycles minus one. We can narrow the field a bit by eliminating BMW motorcycles as no one likes them anyway but that still leaves a lot of bikes. I think it’s better to start from the other end, the end that starts with one.

If you can only have one motorcycle (X, Y and Z= jack-all) then that one motorcycle better be an enduro-type. A combination dirt/street motorcycle is the one to have if you only have one. As X, Y and Z grow larger a street-specific motorcycle is handy for highway rides. That makes two bikes and I really feel two is the minimum number of motorcycles regardless of your situation. You’ll just have to put your nose to the grindstone and increase your X/Y/Z, Bubba.

If we break down street bikes into touring, sport, and vintage categories and dirt bikes into enduro, motocross and vintage you could make the argument that six motorcycles are the minimum amount required. You’ll also need a mini bike for bopping around your ranch and a lightweight moped for running down to the post office. This brings the total to eight motorcycles and I feel that eight motorcycles show a good level of commitment to the motorcycle pastime.

With eight motorcycles on site visitors to your home will rightly expect you to loan them a motorcycle and take them on a little tour of your surroundings. Don’t do it. Your bikes are your bikes and if your visitor crashes one it will poison the friendship. Better to own a loaner bike, one you don’t care about for those pesky hanger-onners. An extra copy of your loaner motorcycle will make visitor rides more fun as neither rider has the upper hand in equipment. So you’ll need ten motorcycles to adequately maintain friendships. A small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Once you’ve got ten motorcycles you may as well go ahead and get a couple nostalgic trinkets from your youth. Maybe a nice example of the first bike you ever owned or the motorcycle your ex-spouse made you get rid of because you had kids. Maybe it’s the bike your dear old dad owned or the model of motorcycle that decapitated a school chum. There are all manner of excellent reasons to own up to sixteen motorcycles.

Moving far from town and building a large shed to house all your motorcycles is a tell tale sign that you may be overdoing things a bit. Living on canned soup, scouring the Internet for motorcycles to buy is not the healthiest lifestyle but it’s not the food choices that get you in the end. Once you start building multilevel lofts to store motorcycles in inaccessible places you are one small earth tremor away from being buried alive by motorcycles.

There’s something about walking in a shed without having to turn sideways that appeals to me. Our economy is built on over consumption. I’m at eight, maybe nine motorcycles now and I’m feeling like I should get rid of a few. So how many motorcycles are too many?  What is your comfort level?