The Number 1 Ugliest Motorcycle of All Time: Buell Lightning. How to take a perfectly wonderful Sportster motor and wrap it inside a train wreck. The whole bike looks like it's sitting in a scrap yard after an 80 mph head on collision with an Amtrak. There are no words to describe the profound repulsive hideousness of this... thing!
Number 2: KTM 690. There simply is no excuse for this sort of design. The may seen as some sort of trendsetting supermotard design, but all it does is just uglify a market segment that is already producing the ugliest bikes around. Maybe the proboscis should be made out of metal so that it can impale pedestrians who get in the way.
Number 3: Honda V45 Magna. Admittedly it was close when placed up against the Suzuki Madura (aaargh!) but the Honda won the battle since it has even more tacked on pipes, bars, slabs and pointless doohickeys than the Manure-a.
Number 4: Honda Rune. The price of a custom-built cruiser without any of the style. The designers of this long, low, bulky battleship may have thought they were setting new styling trends, but all they did was forge a joke. The fenders should have been put back on the 1929 Reo Flatbed where they came from and the exhaust pipe should have had a guard to keep cats from crawling in there and going to sleep.
Number 5: BSA Rocket 3. The original Rocket 3 is even uglier than its bastard offspring. Obviously designed by Gerry Anderson for use in his futuristic puppet shows, it's hard to believe that this same basic bike was marketed as the Triumph Trident which had Bonneville-styled good looks.
Number 6: Triumph Rocket 3. I'm all for innovative styling but this monster just looks like it's an engineering mule. the other side of the bike at least has some visual interest with the three inline cylinders. This side is just cobbled together with shapes that don't fit and curves that don't jibe. Maybe they should have made the already huge picture frame radiator larger and hid the whole bike.
Number 7: Kawasaki KZ1300. Design a great six cylinder inline engine, make sure no one can see the beautiful cascading pipes by hiding them behind a Ford F350 radiator, then hide the rest of it beneath a tank that is shaped like the seated rear end of an obese man. Mix with square headlight and instrument panel and a tail section from a Suzuki GS. Mix and puke.
Number 8: Yamaha Roadliner: Ugly is as ugly does. If you look carefully at the trailing curve of the front fender, you'll think it's an optical illusion. The Art Deco overlay on this bike is like styling a minivan inspired by Michael Keaton's Batmobile. can someone please tell me what those triple lines are doing around the frame neck?
Number 9: Suzuki SV1000. How to take a phenomenal motor and bury it inside angular and completely pointless styling. Is that bottom scoop designed to plough a path for the rear wheel in snow?
Suzuki SV1000. Takes naked styling to a new low. The only great thing about this bike is the engine, so they hide it!
Number 10: Honda CB400F. Honda destroyed the jewel-like CB350 Four after just one year of production and replaced it with this square-edged faux racer junkpile. The exhaust pipes set a new low in idiotic styling and the rest of it is so undescript that it barely even registers. Ride it for two hours and you'll have holes in your legs where those saddle rivets are.
Honda CB400F. Nondescript tank, leg perforating rivets on the seat, and I'm sure a good welder can straighten those exhaust pipes right out
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