Ultimate Motorcycles – Reader’s Rides
Perhaps no book we’ve reviewed for Ultimate MotorCycling’s Rider’s Library is a better fit than Mark Holmes’ “Ultimate Motorcycles – the Most Exotic & Exclusive Bikes on Earth.”
In his nearly three decades of work with motorcycles from all over the world, Holmes has the technical chops to recognize the best of the best. He used that experience to build a book that puts the reader in touch with 106 of the world’s ultimate custom, production and classic motorcycles.
Organized in eight category chapters, Holmes combines detailed narrative and technical information with 155 color images presented on heavy quality glossy bond paper to create the motorcyclist’s dream coffee table book.
To give you a quick insight into the ground he covers the chapters are: Exotic Motorcycles, Cruisers and Custom, Touring, Sports, Off-road & Supermoto, Naked, Retro and Classic. The book’s large format with 160 11.75” x 11.75” pages allow amazing quality and detail in the color images. As an added bonus, the volume includes a list of Internet contacts for the manufacturers and builders featured.
In an interesting strategy of inclusion, Holmes doesn’t limit the book to wild, hyper-expensive one-off customs and ultra-rare classics. Instead, he considers the range of the motorcycling experience and diversity of riders and their resources by including contemporary street bikes you and I can buy such as the Yamaha V-Max, Triumph Bonneville America, Victory Vegas, Honda Gold Wing, Harley-Davidson Electra Glide, and Suzuki Hayabusa as well as a section on off-road and super-moto bikes.
This is not to suggest that there is any shortage of those truly exotic, classic and rare machines. He includes 15 Arlen Ness creations, the Hesketh V1000, the Lazareth Dokujya, Vyrus 4v, Brough Superior SS100, Laverda Jota, Vincent Black Shadow, Yamaha R7 and many more.
So, if you read Ultimate Motorcycling in print or online, you’re bound to find a lot of good reading in Mark Holmes’ “Ultimate Motorcycles-the Most Exotic & Exclusive Bikes on Earth.”
Note — Ultimate Motorcycling magazine is not connected to this book.
Ultimate Motorcycles-the Most Exotic & Exclusive Bikes on Earth
- Author: Mark Holmes
- Published: 2007
- Publisher: Chartwell Books, Inc., 114 Northfield Ave., Edison, NJ 08837, USA
- ISBN: 10:0-7858-2284-4
Rider’s Library—note to readers: many of the books that we’ll feature in Rider’s Library may be out of print and some may be difficult to find. That could be half the fun. The Internet should make the search relatively easy but ironically, none of the books currently scheduled for eventual retro-review for the Rider’s Library section were found with the help of the Internet. They all were found at book stores, used book stores, antique shops, motorcycle shops, yard sales and so on.