When it comes to sport bikes, you can go two ways, naked, or clothed. And while it’s usually true that naked is always more fun, when it your tastes turn to two wheels and a motor, it’s sometimes perfectly okay to stay dressed. The motorcycle is perhaps, more so than a car, the most visceral expression of mechanized transportation, and deserves to be on display. It’s just so elemental, the rider piloting little more than an engine and gas tank supported by a pair of wheels. It’s also designed to be in motion. Hell, if you were to stop the whole thing would tip over without a stout leg extended to prevent such catastrophe.

For the longest time, most bike engines were air-cooled. This meant that they needed to be ‘In The Wind’ which is also the title of one of Bikerdom’s most venerated rags. Today however, as motorcycle makers attempt to eke out more horses, and meet increasingly more stringent emissions standards, more and more motorcycles are water-cooled, and that means controlling airflow and that leads to the application of aerodynamic bodywork. This extrapolates to a schism of preference, naked- like the cafe racers of old, or clothed- like many modern-day super bikes. 

Which you prefer probably depends on what era you claim to have been your formative years. Me, I go all the way back to when motorcycle motors were put on display like works of modern art. Some of my less road-worn friends however, consider bikes like Honda’s sleek Pacific Coast to be all that and a bag of chips. What about your predilection, which do you like better when it comes to motorcycles, clothes on, or clothes off? And which of those is your favorite?

Image sources: Silodrome, CafeRacerCult