Are All Motorcycles The Same?

There are motorcycle industry insiders... and then there are real motorcycle industry insiders. Michael Uhlarik is the latter, with a career that's spanned the western world, for overseas powersports manufacturers like the Piaggio Group and Yamaha Motor Europe, then back in North America with Bombardier as well as other startups. He's seen it all from a high-level perspective, and he's here to tell you the motorcycle industry is changing. Remember Universal Japanese Motorcycles? This term came about in the 1970s, used to describe a situation where all the bikes from Honda, Suzuki, Kawasaki and Yamaha had started to follow a very basic pattern. Now, 50 years later, we're seeing a similar thing happen, spreading across the entire motorcycle industry no matter where your bike is from. We've gone from the UJM to just... "UM."