Five auto brands that make cars and motorcycles

Car drivers and motorcycle riders don’t always get along and many people are either car nuts or bike enthusiasts, however, there are plenty of exceptions including almost all carsales editorial staff, who love both two wheels and four.

But how many car brands also produce motorcycles? Or alternatively, which bike brands build cars? There have been many over the years, but we came up with five and a half companies that currently do… read on to see what we mean.

Honda has long been the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer and the Japanese giant not only has a wide range of two- and four-wheeled vehicles in its current line-up, but several storied cars and bikes in its long history.

Soichiro Honda started out building piston rings for Toyota in the 1930s before transitioning to motorised bicycles in the post-war 1940s.

Nowadays the brand sells in excess of 18 million motorcycles per annum, plus more small engines than just about anyone else and its current bike catalogue is pretty much as wide and varied as they come.

Honda’s car range now also covers most of the passenger and SUV market segments and its 1990s and early-2000s performance cars have one of the strongest cult followings in the industry, with the Civic Type R still remaining one of the world’s best hot hatches.

It’s ironic then that despite its rich history, hallowed brand name and revered reputation for creating quality products, Honda is now a relative minnow in the Aussie new-car market, where its share is less than 1.5 per cent.

BMW is an icon of both the car and bike scenes, having created some of the most legendary machines ever seen on either two wheels or four.

The BMW M3 and M5 are two of the most famous sports sedans ever to exist, while the BMW GS adventure bike and S1000RR superbike rewrote the rulebooks in their respective segments.

The Bavarian brand started producing motorcycles in 1923 and branched across to cars five years later, though both operations were initially secondary to its primary business of aircraft engine production.

These days, BMW caters to almost every corner of the premium auto market, save for dedicated off-roaders and supercars, while BMW Motorrad is present in most major bike segments outside dirt bikes.

Suzuki has perhaps the biggest contrast between its car and bike businesses than any other manufacturer in this list, and it also produces marine powertrains.

The Japanese brand has never been known for its face-ripping performance cars – think Jimny, Vitara and Swift… – and yet that’s the very definition of its sports bike endeavours.

The first GSX-R 750 is widely regarded as the original superbike, the Hayabusa demolished the Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird to become the world’s fastest production bike in 1999 and the first to eclipse 300km/h.

Suzuki still has a full suite of menacing performance bikes up its sleeve, along with plenty of tourers and adventure bikes, not to mention the venerable DR-Z 400 – one of the world’s most beloved dual-sports.

KTM doesn’t mess about – it’s all about performance.

Undeniably a bike manufacturer through and through, KTM’s current range delivers maximum performance and capability in every segment, from learner bikes to superbikes and from dirt bikes to adventure bikes and supermotos in between.

The same is true of the Austrian brand’s single four-wheeled endeavour: the KTM X-Bow.

Conceived as the ultimate track toy that delivers the rawness only a bike can deliver, the X-Box is a roofless two-seat sports car weighing less than 900kg and packing hot-hatch levels of power.

While it doesn’t produce motorcycles in the same ilk as something like a Hayabusa and Super Duke, Peugeot is a surprisingly prominent producer of scooters despite being one of the world’s oldest car brands.

The French marque produced some of the finest performance sedans and hatches of the 20th century and now produces upmarket hatches and SUVs, as well as four distinct lines of scooters ranging between 50-400cc.

Like Suzuki, Honda and BMW, Yamaha is renowned for its superbike exploits (and continues alongside Honda in the premiere MotoGP race class), as well as having a formidable off-road bike arsenal – and a full range of marine engines to match its Japanese rivals, plus jetskis, audio equipment, pianos and other musical instruments.

The Yamaha R1 remains one of the most intense superbikes available and the R6 supersport and WR enduro bikes are top-sellers in their respective classes.

Yamaha also makes a range of side-by-side 4x4 off-roaders and has produced a number of four-wheeled – and most recently three-wheeled – concept vehicles, although it has never actually sold any.

But what many people don’t know is that Yamaha is responsible for some of the most exquisite engines ever crammed under the bonnet of a car, with just a few examples including the Lexus LFA’s 4.8-litre V10, the F-spec Lexus 5.0-litre V8, the 2.0-litre turbo engine in the Toyota Celica GT-Four and the Volvo S80’s 4.4-litre V8.

As evidenced by these and its most recent effort – a hydrogen-fuelled version of the 5.0-litre Lexus V8 – Yamaha clearly knows how to build an engine, which is why it’s included here.

For everything motorcycles, head to bikesales.com.au

Join the conversation at our Facebook page
Or email us at editor@carsales.com.au