Five motorcycle brands that also make cars

Motorcyclists and motorists don’t always get along, but there are many people that love both cars and bikes, including most of the carsales and bikesales editorial staff.

The link between the two- and four-wheel worlds is also common at a manufacturer level, with many brands producing both cars and bikes. Some of these crossovers are well-documented (BMW for example), but others are less obvious.

We put our heads together and came up with five and a half examples…read on to see what we mean. There is a good chance number 5.5 will surprise you!

Honda has long been one of the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturers, but both its cars and bikes are steeped in the brand’s history.

Soichiro Honda started out building piston rings for Toyota in the 1930s before transitioning across to motorised bicycles in the post-war 40s.

Nowadays the brand sells in excess of 18 million motorcycles per annum while its 1990s and early 2000s performance cars have one of the strongest cult followings in the industry.

It’s ironic then Honda’s Australian car operation is a small fry in the current marketplace, despite the legendary brand name, rich history, and revered reputation for creating quality products.

The current motorcycle catalogue is pretty much as wide and varied as they come, while the car line-up caters to most major segments across the passenger and SUV markets.

BMW is an icon of both the car and bike scenes, having created some of the most legendary machines in both areas.

The M3 and M5 are two of the most famous sports sedans ever to exist while the GS adventure bike and the S 1000 RR super bike rewrote the rulebooks of their respective segments.

The Bavarian brand started producing motorcycles in 1923 and branched across to cars five years later, though both operations were second to its initial and primary role as an aircraft engine producer.

These days, BMW caters to almost every corner of the premium automobile industry save for dedicated off-roaders and super cars, while BMW Motorrad is present in most major bike segments outside of the dirt bike scene.

Suzuki has perhaps the biggest contrast between its car and bike line-ups than any other manufacturer in this list.

The Japanese brand has never been known for face-ripping performance cars – a point proven by the Jimny, Vitara, Kizashi, Swift etc – and yet that’s the very definition of its bike endeavours.

The original GSXR750 is widely regarded as the original super bike, the Hayabusa demolished the Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird to become the world’s fastest 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, adventure bikes and dirt bikes. And lets not forget 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 singular car endeavour: the X-Bow.

Conceived as the ultimate track toy and no doubt intended to inject into four-wheeled motoring some of the rawness only a bike can deliver, the KTM X-Box is a roofless two-seat sports car weighing less than 900kg and packing hot hatch levels of power.

While not strictly motorcycles in the same ilk as something like a Hayabusa, Super Duke or R 1250 GS Adventure, Peugeot today is a surprisingly prominent producer of scooters.

Deemed by many to be the world’s oldest car brand, the French marque produced some of the best performance sedans and hot hatches of the twentieth century and now produces upmarket hatches and SUVs.

But you may not know that Peugeot is also the oldest motorcycle brand still in existence. Peugeot built its first motorcycle in 1898, although it used a De Dion-Bouton engine. As a side note, Peugeot’s early automobile history was linked to Gottlieb Daimler, who built the Daimler-Reitwagen in 1885 with Wilhelm Maybach, recognised by many as the world’s first motorcycle.

Today, Peugeot Motorcycles offers four distinct lines of scooters ranging between 50-400cc, but the two-wheel arm is no longer part of the car brand. It was owned by Indian giant Mahindra from 2014 to 2023 and is now owned by German private equity firm Mutares.

Like Suzuki, Honda and BMW, Yamaha is renowned for its superbike exploits as well as having a formidable off-road arsenal.

The R1 was and still is one of the most intense superbikes available with the same true of the supersport R6 and enduro-crushing WR family.

And yet what many people don’t realise is that Yamaha is responsible for some of the most exquisite engines even crammed up the bonnet of a car, with just a few examples including the Lexus LFA’s 4.8-litre V10, F-spec Lexus 5.0-litre V8, the Toyota Celica GT4’s 2.0-litre turbo and 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.