10 WORST Motorcycles Ever Made

I was working for BSA Group when the awful Ariel 3 was lunched. Just before its demise demonstrators were sent around the plants in the group in an attempt to get employs to buy one, at an amazing discount. Like the Ariel 3 this was doomed to abject failure but we got 30 minutes off work to watch one being ridden round and round in endless circles. Thanks for the memory and a laff.

My first motorcycle was a 1976, 750 Honda Matic. It was so slow, the police could catch me on foot. I still loved it and rode it slow on purpose. It still got me to the beach.

That CFMoto V5 looks like a motorcycle designed by the same AI that gives people three arms and 15 fingers.

I bought, and still own a Niken and it's front end has never needed anything other than regular maintenance. In fact the whole bike has never broken down. I bought it after back surgery to get back on the road...and just haven't bought anything else.

As an american I have not heard of half of these motorcycles. The last one had me in stitches (laughing) with its self draining oil system. Thanks for the video.

The rotary engine has always given problems, just ask NSU... Mazda poured a fortune into getting the tip seals right. I used to race an Mazda RX-3, but with a full-race periphial-port 13B instead of the standard 12A engine. I periodically had to replace the tip seals with new ceramic ones that cost $1,000 each and there's three of them in the engine. That was back in '93, so that 1k would be $2,200 each in today's money.

I had a good giggle listening to your description of these bikes.

Hello mate. I love this! So many manufacturers have got it wrong over the years. The worst one that I’ve owned is the first Suzuki TL1000S. To put this into context I was racing for Suzuki Australia at the time with Phillip Island as my home track and got one for the streets. No matter what myself or even race team manager did to adjust suspension set up it was borderline dangerous in high speed corners. It sounded incredible, was quick in a straight line for its time, just lacked the ability to mildly push it through corners to a point where I had the chain come off the rear sprocket, mid corner. My team manager was an Australian Champion from the early to mid 80’s and his thoughts after he rode it were the same. It just spent more time in the shop than on the road until Suzuki admitted it had “a fault” and ended up replacing it for free with the R version. This was an improvement however only had a bandaid fix to the rear setup instead of a complete redesign that it required. So, for me the S was the worst bike I’ve owned in over 40 years. Keep up the awesome work you do and provide as it’s second to none and possibly why YouTube is causing “happy days” for you. 👍😎🇦🇺

The Megola was a German motorcycle produced between 1921 and 1925 in Munich, with a 5 cylinder radial engine mounted inside the spokes of the front wheel. No starter! The only way to start it was a running jump start, and stopping involved stopping the engine first. Amazing!

Congratulations on your video, a pleasure to watch. You missed the Amazonas 1600, fabricated years ago in Brazil with the VW Beetle engine. It deserves being in your list so much.

I think the Velocette Valiant deserves an honourable mention. Few people will have seen one. Imagine a BMW copy but with a 192cc boxer engine churning out a massive 12BHP in a day when a Tiger Cub of the same capacity was lighter, cheaper, easy to maintain and produced 14.5BHP, and the Japanese were coming. It didn't kill Velocette but it certainly contributed to its demise.

Great vlog. I laughed out loud more than once. I actually really like the DN-O1 & the Niken, but I am a bit weird. Damn... that CFMoto at the end was truly shocking. 😅 Thought I'd mention that YouTube unsubscribed me from your channel. It's happened with a few other channels, too. I don't know what the heck they're playing at.

This is a fabulous compilation of the worst of the worst. I remember each and every one of those piles of crap. I worked for Kawasaki and later Yamaha. In the R&D department and we saw an endless stream of bad ideas come down from corporate. Somehow when someone is put in the higher management levels they had to put their ideas into the mix with the corporate boys. It becomes abundantly clear that getting to the top of an industry didn’t make them any brighter. There are of course other jewels of the two wheeled industry. The Puch Twingle comes to mind. A 350 twin with one connecting rod and cast iron cylinders was my favorite of the why bother models. It was pathetically underpowered and fortunately it wasn’t fast enough to 😊get you into too much trouble because the stamped sheet metal frame and front forces were as spongy as if it were made of wood. Did I mention the saddle? A blob of foam covered with some rather slick plastic let you slide around while trying to get the thing to go around any corner. We took one of them to a flat track race as a joke during intermission to give the crowd some entertainment. The plan was to take it out on the infield track and wrestle it around some corners and then have it catch fire. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Well it had a fuel line pop of the carburetor during a corner and cover the engine and my boots with gasoline and proceeded to catch fire. That definitely got the crowd cheering and I didn’t know it was happening until I felt the heat and looked down. I hopped off of the bike and let it burn. The crowd liked that even more. Apparently they didn’t appreciate the infield entertainment. A complete and utter failure. I learned to not get involved in anymore ridiculous schemes again.

I always assumed the Tomahawk was never intended as a production bike. It was Dodge's half-attempt at a concept bike, and half marketing ploy for their Viper engine.

DN-01 is a nice looking bike, they could probably remake it today using a CMX1100 DCT, it might even work better.

Just say Harley Davison and leave it at that.

It's not really a motorcycle, but when I was a kid I had an AMF Roadmaster moped, with the engine suspended above the rear wheel. It drove the wheel via a friction roller that ran on the tire itself. To say this thing was a pile of shit would be an understatement! Everything broke on it.

Hahahaha. BSA ariel 3 truly horrific but a hilarious fun ride Cheers for the mention mucker

My first ever bike was an Ariel Three. When I was 14 I wanted a motorcycle & my mum said a big no. I bought a non running Ariel Three for £4.73 & when I took it home my reasoning was ‘it’s a tricycle’. I got away with it for being smart & not clever!

Very well done. It was very interesting as I had never heard of most of these disasters! Thank you.