The Lowdown Show - By ADVrider

The late great Steve Thornton edited ADVRider.com's Photo Of The Week feature for years. I’m happy to report we’ve found a worthy successor to carry on Steve’s work. And I don’t say that casually. Katie Hunter is just about as singular a personality as was Steve. She rides an BMW airhead, she’d rather shiver at a campsite than have a warm shower, and she’s worked at a funeral home as an embalmer....

Mirrors on motorcycles are almost universally wretched. They either present you with a movie of your elbows or they whimper and fold at merely the thought of a twig brushing against them. Most of us just complain about them. A wonderful motorcycle with bad mirrors is dead to us. (Unless it’s Italian.) But one man with a similarly vexed history with the mirror put his foot down, drew a line in the...

Dallas Shannon from Traction ERag Adventures joins Neil to outline their upcoming schools and to debunk some of the myths that surround off-road riding. We’re in a peculiar moment in that the ADV-style motorcycle is the de-facto standard of our age, and yet taking a significantly-sized motorcycle into the dirt is beyond the skillset of many a purchaser. Dallas & company hope to change that. Have a...

It’s the most important motorcycle show in the world and regular contributor and Motorcycle Global main-man Michael Uhlarik is here to give The Lowdown the lowdown. We’ll address the rise of the Chinese, the resurgence of Honda, the absence of KTM and ponder a scooter with two cupholders. And lots more, including ADV bikes-a-plenty. Because of the liberal use of video and photographs, you may wish...

Scott Calhoun has the most bizarre motorcycling history of any man I’ve met. Up until age 55 he hadn’t ridden a motorcycle. And then, for the next decade, he rode every paved road in America that held any promise for enthusiasts. Every single road. Then the co-founder of Butler Motorcycle Maps—that’s why he rode those roads—sold his BMW and moved on to disc golf. What you and I would call tossing...

Have you ever been away, for vacation or for work, and had to rent a car? But what if you could rent a motorcycle instead of a car? Of course you can rent motorcycles now. But it’s often a cumbersome process involving a dealership—which can complicate pickup and drop-off if they’re far from you and that often limits you to whatever units they dedicate as rentals. But what if you could rent a wide...

If you’ve ever watched police riders whip a Harley or a big BMW in and around pylons that appear impossibly close together, then you’ll appreciate this week’s guest, Quinn Redeker. Redeker is a maverick in the world of pilon-slaloming in that he adopts techniques from most all motorcycling disciplines, including, but not limited to, motocross, trials and roadracing. Even if you’re not interested i...

Gregory Frazier skips to his own beat. Dr. G, as he prefers to be called, is an author and globe-trotting bon-vivant and a man often mistaken for Ozzy Osbourne—when Ozzy was still living, presumably. Dr. G riffs to Neil Graham about pioneer motorcycle traveller Carl Stearns Clancy, references a book he considers the best ever written about an RTW trip, and disses on meeting Robert Pirsig—yes, the...

When Lang Hindle’s career as a superbike racer ended he turned to the art of pipe bending, using experience gained in racing to build an empire of exhaust. Lang and Neil discuss the art of tuning, the mindset of a racer, the progression of an industry, and—naturally—noise.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daryl Tearne—fresh out of design school—landed the oddest dream gig of all: redesigning the Crocker motorcycle for the modern age. Crocker, with less than 50 ever made, make brands like Vincent seem mainstream. But Tearne did the near impossible and made a prototype that was at once futuristic and traditional. When that project hit a wall, he moved on to Buell, for yet another project that hit an...

For more than a decade, small, independent manufacturers have tantalized us with promises of mass electric motorcycle production. We are constantly told of new technologies that will revolutionize the battery bike scene, and yet this corner of the motorcycle world has been filled with bankruptcies, not success stories. Now Honda is about to launch their first full-sized electric motorcycle, early...

Is Stoicism the secret to speed? From timid to 200 miles per hour—how Louisa Swaden used stoicism’s principles to unleash the woman within. And how her new book—The Stoic Rider—can help you to do the same. This week on the Lowdown podcast Louisa talks to Neil Graham about how motorcycles changed her life, long before she had any idea on how to change a tire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Most every type of motorcycle originated in Europe. Paris—of all places—begat the supermoto and our beloved ADV. But that’s not all. Michael Uhlarik reports in from Italy on a motorcycling culture more inclusive and less dismissive than our ways in the west. We also talk Roman roads, Roman chariots, and expertly ridden motorcycles owned by people who don’t really consider themselves enthusiasts. D...

Summer's almost over, so what did we get out of it? Rumors and confirmations of new motorcycles, a lot of wildfires and some surprising stories about the situation that average riders face at their local dealerships. The Lowdown Show wraps up August with a talk with ADVrider's managing editor Zac Kurylyk. Zac and host Neil Graham discuss the topics that have made headlines this summer, like issues...

Longtime Cycle World and Road & Track writer Peter Egan is back with a new book. Landings in America chronicles a mid-‘80s trip around the US with his wife Barb in a vintage Piper Cub airplane. Landings is a classic Egan travelogue with a dash of reflective pathos that lends the book the gravitas of memoir. Neil Graham talks to Peter about the trip, about motorcycles, and about why it took him 35...

Harley-Davidson at the crossroads. How bad are things at H-D? They’ve sold off a chunk of the ultra-profitable financial services division in an attempt to keep the wolves from the door. Will the new CEO—plucked from the world of pizza and golf—be able to craft a plan to lead the brand back onto its feet? Michael is doubtful. And hopeful. But time, just as it is for all men, is running out. Learn...

The proposed selling of public lands and looming tariffs threaten to derail an already struggling US motorcycle market. Motorcycle Industry Council lobbyist Scott Schloegel, who for years worked inside government, has, for the past eight years, worked to bring the interests of US motorcycle manufacturers and distributors to legislators and lawmakers. In addition to a 2025 status report, Schloegel...

The motorcycle manufacturers' head offices tell us not to worry about the state of dealerships in North America—"Everything's fine, fine fine!" we're told. But if you look around, you see dealerships closing everywhere, and others seeming to be in financial straits. What's going on? Dealers are close-lipped trying to avoid trouble with the OEMs' bigwigs. But Mark Sheffield, who's been working on w...

While OEMs claim all is well in dealership land, the dealerships themselves tell a different story—if only they’d talk on the record, which they won’t. Mark Sheffield has been involved with dealerships for decades and pulls back the curtain on a relationship that is as often contentions as it is convivial. Part one of our conversation with Mark is this week, next week in part two we’ll wrap it up....

America has long been seen as the big bike capital of the motorcycling world. Gold Wings, Harleys, Indians, superbikes and, for this readership, KTM Adventures and BMW GSs. But, as industry watcher Michael Uhlarik points out, it’s just not true. Or at least not true anymore. Small bikes are making a big comeback, and that’s not just an opinion, it’s the truth—sales numbers make it blatantly clear....

How tough is BMW’s GS Trophy, the one-make, one-model competition that pits skilled amateur riders from across the globe against each other? We talk to team USA’s Scott Acheson, who competed in Namibia in the most recent competition. Here’s a spoiler: Namibian sand, Scott tells Neil Graham, is not like Floridian sand. Would Scott do it again? Absolutely. Would he prepare for it differently? Absolu...

Hugo Eccles does it all. Designer, teacher, customizer, lover of petrol and enthusiastic about electrification. In this episode, Hugo and Neil dig into the perils of designing electric motorcycles, the challenges of customization and malaise that makes most new motorcycles look so damn busy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caius Tenche doesn’t do half measures. After discovering motorcycling in his 40s, he promptly decided what the world needed was a film festival catering to riders. And riders only. If you can’t make his festival, listen-on, as Tenche picks a few favorites from the past and tells us how to watch them for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Motorcycle-mad Peter Dering founded Peak Design off the back of one product. Now, the San Franciscan has built an empire of rolling carts and backpacks and what he claims is the single best motorcycle phone mount in captivity. Peak Design is also a case study in how to build a business in the modern age, as it successfully crowdsources development funding in lieu of seeking outside investors. Lear...

Pundit Michael Uhlarik claims we in the west have been getting the KTM story all wrong. Or mostly wrong. The readily-accepted narrative—that new majority-shareholder Bajaj will benefit from KTM’s technology and expertise—is pure poppycock. And Michael draws a parallel between KTM’s woes and the near collapse and diminished future of another major European OEM to prove his point.    Learn more abou...