If you’ve ever ridden two wheels, propelled by the power of a perfectly-tuned engine, shifting into top gear to arrow into the horizon, you’ll know there are few things more thrilling than being astride a motorbike at full-throttle. Whether your machine is a 100cc chug-a-long or a 1000cc chopper, you’ll appreciate the elements of ‘beast’ and ‘beauty’ that go into making the motorbike the wonderful thing that it is. Since the vehicle started becoming such a popular mode of transport after the First World War, the biggest names in manufacturing – from Triumph to Harley Davidson to Kawasaki – have strived to achieve that dream combination of speed and design.
The perfect machine is as much about aesthetic beauty as it is about precision mechanics, and those bikers who are lucky enough to be able to afford two-wheel perfection also know that the dream machine costs plenty. But what we may perceive as being an expensive motorbike – perhaps the cost of a small residential property in the UK – is peanuts when compared to the cost of the most desirable two-wheel machines in the world.
So what sum would buy you a beautiful, powerful motorbike that will be the envy of every biker who lays their eyes on it? Harley Davidson, the epitome of motorbike perfection in terms of classic design and road-burning power, would command a hefty payment in the region of £50,000 in 2024, to acquire a Harley CVO Limited Edition. But there’s expensive, then there’s ‘expensive’. Here are the most desirable, dream-driven, most expensive motorbikes on the planet right now. Read on and enjoy but helmets are advisable when looking at the price tag.
BMS Nehmesis
Now this is not the motorbike that’s most pleasing to the eye. It may be shiny and glittery but the Nehmesis has been described as being reminiscent of a marooned whale lying flat on its underbelly. Even so, this is a fully functional, road-worthy machine, incorporating an air-ride system that, along with the single-sided swingarm rear suspension, can lift the motorcycle 10 inches or lower it right onto the ground. Without a routine side-stand, the Nehmesis softly lands on its frame rails when it’s time to park. But that’s not the most noteworthy feature of the bike; the glittery yellow parts of the vehicle are nothing less than 24-karat gold. Once you know this, the Nehmesis’s $3 million cost is less of a surprise.
The Hildebrand and Wolfmüller
What you’re actually buying here is pure history but this is a motorbike you’re unlikely to be taking for a spin around the local roads and avenues. At $3.5 million, you’re more likely to exhibit it in a secure National Museum –130 years ago, this was the world’s first production motorcycle. The Hildebrand brothers were steam-engine engineers before they teamed up with Alois Wolfmüller to produce their first combustion-engine-powered Motorrad in Munich in 1894. This in effect, is the first fuel-powered motorbike but effort was still required to hit the roads. If you wanted to ride this beauty back in those days, you’d have to give it a push start, running and jumping aboard as soon as the engine spluttered into life. Given its value, it’s much more advisable to go the museum route.
Ecosse ES1 Spirit
This beast isn’t your usual motorbike in any shape or form. It takes a real bike enthusiast to understand how this work of engineering tears up the design book. For those technically minded, there is no chassis framework to speak of. Swingarm and rear suspension attach to the gearbox, and front suspension to the engine. The much touted 265 pounds speck of a weight comes from eliminating the extra pounds associated with transmitting front-wheel forces up a slender fork through a steering-head then back down to the rest of the machine. Suffice it to say, it’s a work of genius. Apparently, it takes an expert rider, and then some, to handle this bike, as the ES1 Spirit performs more like a Formula One car. A fact reflected in its current $3.6 million value.
1949 E90 AJS Porcupine
Another sought-after bike, very much because of its significance in the history of the motorcycle, is the E90. A high-profile manufacturer with a rich history and winning racetrack heritage, AJS only managed to produce four Porcupines in 1949 because of financial problems. But one of these won the 1949 World Championship, in the expert hands of Les Graham. With a truly unique design for its time, the E90 has an open frame made of aluminium alloy, a 500cc twin engine with horizontal cylinders and heads, giving the Porcupine a highly-desirable low centre of gravity. Perhaps the most talked- about two-wheeled vehicle through the Cold War years, the only surviving Porcupine spent twenty years in the Coventry National Motorcycle Museum before a wealthy enthusiast spent big to secure ownership of a machine worth around $7million these days.
Neiman Marcus Limited Edition Fighter
At a market value of around $ 11 million, the Limited Edition Fighter has appreciated a hundred-fold since its ‘birth’ at the end of the Noughties. The bike’s eye-catching clockwork design featuring a chassis carved from a single piece of metal, proved to be an extreme hit. Considered styling at its best, the design looks more akin to a prop from a sci-fi movie than a 100% functioning vehicle. Neiman commented on the bike saying: “It’s an evolution of the machine, at once taken back down to its core elements while being reinvented and re-engineered for optimal performance. It’s our street-legal sci-fi dream come to life.” Only 45 ever hit the market, the Fighter managed the road at a 190 mph top speed, but with its unique titanium, aluminium, and carbon-fibre body parts, this bike is much, much more than a speed machine.
While these machines are truly amazing, their cost is beyond astounding. The mind-blowing price tag of each, whether it’s down to the materials used, the space-age design and engineering involved, or the history of the vehicle itself, makes the motorbikes available for a five-figure sum seem good-value by comparison. But for the biker in love with the two-wheeled power machine, these are all objects of pure adoration, dreams to be rode down that sunset-bound dream highway.
