What are the main types of motorcycle?
Sports and superbikes, naked roadsters, cruisers, tourers, adventure machines, off-road bikes, and retro styles like the cafe racer and scrambler. Seven broad families, none of them defined by anybody official.
Start with the honest part, because it changes how you read every list like this one. There is no standards body for motorcycle styles. These names were settled between riders, builders and marketing departments over about seventy years, and they shift. What follows is how the words get used, not a specification anyone can hold you to.
The seven families
Sports bikes and superbikes are built around a lap time: a forward crouch, a full fairing, everything aimed at speed. Naked roadsters take the fairing off, sit you upright, and are usually the easier thing to live with. Cruisers give up lean angle for a low, feet-forward stance. Tourers add weather protection and luggage, because the ride is measured in counties. Adventure machines lift the suspension so the road can stop being tarmac. Off-road bikes drop the road-legal parts entirely. And the retro styles, the cafe racer and the scrambler among them, borrow the look of an older machine and put it on modern running gear.
The one official categorisation
UK law does sort motorcycles, but not by shape. GOV.UK's driving licence categories divide them by power and capacity instead: the A1 category is capped by capacity and power, A2 by power alone, and category A sits above both. What cc means quotes the figures. A cruiser and a superbike can share a licence category, and two bikes that look alike can fall either side of one. Style and legal class have nothing to do with each other.
Whichever family you ride, there is a page for it in art by bike style, or send a photo of your own machine through the Paint Shop. Buying for a rider instead? The gift ideas guide sorts the options out.
Written by Craig Fearn, Throttlefolio. Last updated .
Workshop notes
Questions, answered
Is a cafe racer a type of motorcycle or a style?
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A style. Most cafe racers began as ordinary road bikes and were converted to fit the look, and the same goes for bobbers and scramblers. Manufacturers now build bikes to those looks from new, which muddies the distinction further.
Which type of motorcycle suits a new rider?
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Naked roadsters get recommended most often, for reasons that are easy to see: upright, predictable, and no expensive fairing to replace if it goes over in a car park. What you are legally allowed to ride is a separate question, and it is answered by licence category rather than by style.