Watch a brief video tour of the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum 

Past exhibits have included motorcycles readily recognizable to the general public such as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Harley Fat Boy from Terminator 2 and Will Smith’s I, Robot MV Agusta, specifically chosen to introduce a wider audience to the museum. Don’t let those bikes fool you into thinking the museum is just about Hollywood motorcycling silliness; it’s a serious collection of exhibits and information focused on our motorcycle culture.

The museum contains approximately 100 motorcycles, including the kind of vintage bikes you expect to see in a first class motorcycle museum. More significantly, however, the museum’s Motorcycle Hall of Fame honors motorcyclists who have made serious contributions to the sport through their accomplishments — men like Bart Markel (National No. 1 when I was a teenager), Dave Mungenast (a serious offroad competitor who ran in no fewer than nine International Six Day Trials), Steve McQueen (movie star and motorcycle racer extraordinaire), and Dave Barr, a double amputee who rode around the world on a beat-up old Harley-Davidson and wrote a book about it — I know Dave, and he’s the real deal. And so are the bikes in the museum.

The museum prides itself on the fact that when it displays famous motorcycles in the Hall of Fame, they are the actual historically significant bikes — not just the same models. For example, the 1972 Harley-Davidson Super Glide Shovelhead that Dave Barr rode around the world is on display.

The museum also contains an extensive collection of motorcycle photographs and other archival material available for historical research. When I was writing The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles nearly 20 years ago, it was a simple matter to call the museum and obtain copies of World War II military Harley-Davidson photographs, including an experimental Harley boxer twin — the Harley XA — that never made it to production. The museum is a treasure, and should be on every motorcyclist’s short list of places to visit. MC