Published: April 11, 2026
When the men who shape how America thinks about motorcycles are busy posting MAGA content to Facebook, who exactly is supposed to recruit the next generation of riders?
That question sits uncomfortably at the center of a slow-motion crisis in American motorcycling — one where sales have fallen for two consecutive years, the median buyer is now 50 years old, and the sport’s most influential media voices are, according to multiple sources familiar with their social media activity, among the loudest amplifiers of the political identity that makes motorcycling radioactive to younger, more diverse potential riders.
Politics is downstream of culture. And so is commerce.
Motorcycle magazines used to be the prime pipeline to create new riders. If you didn’t grow up riding, there had to be a vector. Now the magazines are mostly gone, it falls to a few YouTube channels and some really lame websites.
Ultimate Motorcycling — a Thousand Oaks, California-based digital publication operating under Coram Publishing — is one of the most-trafficked motorcycle media properties in the United States, ranking roughly sixth in the domestic category by Similarweb data. It is powered by two figures: Arthur Coldwells, the British-born founder and President who launched the outlet in 2003 as Robb Report MotorCycling and bought the brand outright in 2008, and Don Williams, its Editor, who has run editorial operations for two decades. Their publication is OEM-credentialed, press-launch-invited, and a primary advertising vehicle for brands including Yamaha — which sponsors the Motos & Friends podcast — Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Triumph, Royal Enfield, and BMW.
Coldwells and Williams have been described by sources familiar with their social media activity as outspoken MAGA supporters whose personal Facebook commentary reflect the far-right political identity increasingly synonymous with motorcycling’s brand crisis. Their editorial content — motorcycle reviews, racing coverage, gear writeups — contains no overt political content. The problem is structural, not editorial.
This is how the damage happens in motorcycle media: not through branded content with a Trump flag in the corner, but through the slow cultural osmosis of who gets to be a “real” motorcyclist, whose aesthetics dominate the media ecosystem, and whose voices carry the aspirational weight of the sport. When the editors gatekeeping that ecosystem privately hold and publicly express political views that align with a demographic the industry is actively trying to move beyond, the contradiction isn’t incidental. It’s load-bearing.
The industry faces “an unprecedented demographic transformation that threatens its fundamental business model.” — CSM International
What the OEMs are paying for
Ultimate Motorcycling’s advertiser relationships create a specific accountability question. Yamaha, which explicitly sponsors the Motos & Friends podcast, is also a company whose global communications positioning emphasizes lifestyle accessibility and has expanded aggressively into beginner-friendly segments. Honda publishes annual Inclusion & Diversity Reports and has positioned its Navi at $1,807 as an entry-level gateway. Royal Enfield’s entire North American strategy is predicated on demographic expansion. Triumph’s Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride partnership raises money for men’s health and explicitly aims to “challenge the stereotypes associated with motorcyclists.”
These brands are investing in outreach to exactly the demographics that sources say Ultimate Motorcycling’s leadership is, through personal social media activity, actively antagonizing.
The question isn’t whether Arthur Coldwells or Don Williams have a right to their political views. They do, in the same way that any private individual does. The question is whether the brands supporting their platform have asked themselves whether those views are compatible with the market expansion strategies those same brands are publicly committed to — and whether they would characterize their advertising spend as brand-safe given what they know, or ought to know, about where that money lands.
Motorcycle Consumer News, which ran for 50 years before closing its doors, was once described as the one publication in the category that genuinely tried to be consumer advocacy rather than OEM marketing. It is gone. What remains is largely a content ecosystem that depends on manufacturer goodwill and reflects manufacturer anxiety about alienating the aging customer base it cannot afford to lose — even as that base dies, literally and demographically, on a knowable schedule.
The Motorcycle Industry Council’s own recruitment data tells the story. Its 2025 Moto Intro program attracted 360 first-time riders across three cities — 47% women, average age 31. That is the rider the industry needs. The cultural forces, including the media voices the industry funds, are working in the opposite direction.
The numbers make the brand problem impossible to ignore
US new motorcycle sales fell to an estimated 507,000 units in 2025 — down 7.6% year-over-year, and barely half the industry’s 2005–2006 peak of approximately 1.1 million units. The first half of 2025 posted the worst numbers in over a decade. Harley-Davidson, the market’s most culturally loaded brand, dropped 12.9% in US unit sales and fell to third place behind Honda and Kawasaki for the first time. Its stock has lost nearly half its value over five years.
The demographic data is the industry’s real crisis document. According to Motorcycle Industry Council Owner Survey data, the median US motorcycle owner was 27 years old in 1985. By 2018 — the most recent published survey — that median had climbed to 50. The under-18 ownership cohort has collapsed from 8% to 2%. Riders aged 18–24 fell from 16% to 6%. Meanwhile, 24% of current owners are retired. The buyer pipeline isn’t slow. It’s broken. And dinosaurs like Coldwells and Williams have zero to offer new riders, much less the aspirational profiles of earlier generations of motojournalists.
Prices have compounded the access problem. The volume-weighted average new motorcycle now runs approximately $12,000, with Harley-Davidson’s lineup starting at $10,000 and topping out well above $50,000. Tariffs in 2025 added $67 million in costs to Harley alone, with analysts projecting 5–35% price increases across the category hitting 2026 model years. Entry-level options from major OEMs have nearly vanished. A minimum safety gear setup — helmet, jacket, gloves, boots, pants — costs $850 to $1,200 before a buyer touches a throttle.
CSM International, which tracks market dynamics in the powersports sector, put the stakes plainly: the industry faces “an unprecedented demographic transformation that threatens its fundamental business model.” The customer base it has is aging out. The customer base it needs is not showing up.
Harley’s DEI collapse showed exactly what the sport is dealing with
The industry’s cultural fault line cracked open publicly in August 2024. Conservative political influencer Robby Starbuck — not a motorcycle journalist, but a MAGA-aligned social media figure with more than 500,000 X followers — posted a video attacking Harley-Davidson for LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce membership, Pride event sponsorships, and supplier diversity goals. Elon Musk amplified the attack. The backlash arrived at Sturgis in real time: a YouTuber destroyed a Harley with a machine gun on camera; a longtime Sturgis dealer said it was “branding suicide.”
Within weeks, Harley’s corporate capitulation was total. No DEI function since April 2024. No supplier diversity goals. No Human Rights Campaign corporate scoring. Starbuck declared “another win.”
The sport’s own data made the reversal self-defeating. Harley had previously reported that sales to women, riders under 35, Black Americans, and Hispanic buyers were growing at double the rate of its core base. The diversification was working. The political pressure killed it anyway.
Polaris, parent company of Indian Motorcycle, quietly scrubbed DEI language from its website simultaneously. Starbuck posted Jochen Zeitz’s Harley departure in April 2025 and claimed credit.
The MIC’s flagship “Ride With Us” recruitment campaign — launched in 2021 with the tagline “What does a motorcycle rider look like? Exactly like you?” — is explicitly designed to counter the cultural narrowing. Honda’s VP and former MIC board chair Chuck Boderman described it as existential: “This is not designed to be a quick fix, nor is it just about sales. It’s about showing people how motorcycles can fit into and enrich their lives, no matter where they live, what they do, what their hobbies are, or how old or young they are.”
That effort is swimming against a very strong cultural current.
Where Ultimate Motorcycling fits in the brand risk equation
Ultimate Motorcycling is not the largest moto media property in the US. Cycleworld, Motorcyclist Online, Motorcycle.com, and RideApart all sit above it in traffic rankings. But it occupies a specific and consequential niche: it is one of the most OEM-integrated smaller outlets in the country, with its Yamaha-sponsored podcast serving as the de facto brand voice for a roster of advertisers that collectively represent the industry’s recruitment ambitions. Begging the question— who at Yamaha Motor USA is destroying their brand with troglodytes?
The advertiser list is a who’s-who of brands publicly committed to growing beyond their traditional customer. Royal Enfield — whose Build. Train. Race. all-women’s racing program and sub-$8,000 pricing commitment are the industry’s most concrete departure from the old model — is a regular content partner. Triumph, BMW, Honda, Kawasaki, and Insta360 all maintain active relationships with the outlet. These brands are paying, at least in part, for access to an editorial platform whose principals are described as actively propagating the political identity those same brands are trying to distance themselves from.
The structural conflict runs deeper than personal politics. Ultimate Motorcycling’s business model is entirely dependent on OEM goodwill: press launch invitations, manufacturer loan bikes, and advertising relationships that generate the revenue keeping a sub-$25 million operation alive. That dependency creates a soft editorial ceiling on critical coverage and a strong incentive to reflect the cultural values of the existing buyer base — who are the existing advertising base.
Coldwells’ own editorial position on the Motos & Friends podcast includes what amounts to sponsored content segments with affiliate deal structures, promotional codes, and integrated brand messaging. The line between editorial and advertising is operationally thin at outlets of this scale. When the people running that editorial operation privately hold and express views that map cleanly onto the cultural tribe that has captured American motorcycling’s brand, the magazine becomes — regardless of whether it ever runs a political word — a mirror of exactly the problem the industry says it needs to solve.
The industry’s next generation of riders is looking for different mirrors
The demographics of the rider communities growing fastest in the US paint a different picture than the one reflected in most moto media. Women now represent 19% of motorcycle owners, up from 6% in 1990 — and the fastest-growing segment, with millennial women in particular showing the highest new-rider conversion rates. Can-Am reports that 32% of its three-wheel on-road buyers are female. BRP’s own data shows 80% of its rider training participants have no prior license.
Black motorcycle culture in the US is deep and long-standing — the East Bay Dragons founded in Oakland in 1959, Bikers Raising Awareness and Providing Barriers (BRAPB) working explicitly to “change the narrative of motorcycle culture,” the New Orleans all-female Caramel Curves appearing in Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty campaign. None of this has meaningfully penetrated mainstream US moto media coverage. The gap between the diverse reality of American motorcycling and its dominant media image is not an accident — it is the product of who is running the publications and what they regard as the sport’s core identity.
Royal Enfield’s North America president Rod Copes articulated the opportunity as plainly as anyone in the industry: “It’s really about going back to what motorcycling was about — easy, fun, affordable. We want to introduce that back into the market.” His company sells bikes to BMX riders and skateboarders. Its Build. Train. Race. program is sponsored by Ultimate Motorcycling’s advertiser Comoto.
The cognitive dissonance is not subtle.
The throttle is stuck. The question is who did the damage.
Related Coverage:
→ Read this investigation on North Denver Tribune
→ See coverage from North Carolina Chronicle
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