An Ode to Gas Tanks
Often looked over, but ever important.
One of the beautiful things about bike culture is the wide breadth of people it draws in, and with them, diverse tastes. Walk around a motorcycle show and look at the spread of people present. Machines from different decades, all reflecting some aspect of their owners preferences, brimming with history and stories from the road. You might find high-budget custom builds sporting a full repaint and performance parts galore. Or perhaps a family heirloom bike, passed down through generations. Whatever you stumble across, one of the things that makes a bike look complete is the gas tank. It simply looks wrong without that lump of metal in front of the seat. It is easy to think of the gas tank simply as a container with a singular purpose, but it also serves as a canvas. Tank art and the designs brands use provide a colorful journey through history and culture.
Certain brands can lean into nostalgia and their back catalogs to revive models and aesthetics of yesteryear. Harley Davidson has more heritage to pull from than other motorcycle brands, which is something they know their customers respond well to. Back when the first Sportsters were hitting US roadways, it was a fast, sporty motorcycle by standards of the day. Decades later, the Sportster name is still the best selling Harley model.
Every show, I inevitably have the same thought, “I love all the different bikes that showed up today.” It’s colorful, vibrant, and rarely duplicated. For me, there is an equal gravitational pull to bikes that are elegant and calmly stated, like this Electra Glide (pictured below), and the bikes that sparkle like a Christmas tree in December.