The World of Motorcycling.

Two wheels and an engine. The basic ingredients of the motorcycle are so simple; but its attraction, stronger than ever after 110 years of relentless development, is so hard to explain. Part of the reason for this is that motorcycling means so many things to so many different people. ' More than merely a form of transport, it incorporates everything from an ancient Scott roadster to Aprilia's modern 250cc Grand Prix racer, from a booming Velocette single to Honda's futuristic EXP-2 desert racer.

Let's take a winding ride on the first ever motorcycle -- Gottlieb Daimler's Einspur -- to the fastest ever -- Dave Campo's 322mph (518kph) Harley-Davidson-- via Chelsea Bridge, Hollywood and the Nurburgring. But if it is the machines that form the outline of the motorcycling picture, then it's the people who design, modify, pose, commute or tour on, race, crash, repair, fight or save lives on them who add the colour.

Motorcycling history is their story. Mick Doohan pulling a wheelie on his Honda NSR500 to Marlon Brando leaning on his Triumph Thunderbird; from a medical worker delivering supplies in the African Bush to a Sunday morning superbiker cranking a Ducati 916 through a turn. Many different individuals, on many different motorcycles, and each in very different situations. And each is united to the other by a shared appreciation of two wheels and an engine. 

The Evolution of the Motorcycle.

By all accounts it was a short and slow journey. With a 0.5 horsepower engine, wooden frame and no suspension, that was inevitable. But when Paul Daimler rode his engineer father Gottlieb's new contraption named Einspur (One Track) around the countryside near Stuttgart in Germany on 10 November 1885, he was taking what is commonly accepted as to be the world's first ride on a motorbike.

Motorcycles have come a long way from those days to the present, when even ordinary middleweights easily reach 100mph (160kph) with reliability.But when comparing the earliest bikes of the century to the sophisticated, powerful machines of today, in many respects it's noticeable not how much but how little motorcycles have changed. Of course, there is a huge difference between the 1901 New Werner and Honda's latest Grand Prix racer --- but the two are unmistakably related. Lets take a ride down a winding country road and see how the former evolved into the latter.