LiveWire takes on EICMA with our biggest, broadest, and most exciting lineup yet.
Every November, more than half a million motorcycle fanatics descend on Milan for what can best be described as the entire global motorcycle industry collectively shouting, “LOOK AT ME!”
It is enormous, loud, crowded, slightly overwhelming, and completely wonderful. Major manufacturers gather beneath dramatic lighting to ceremoniously yank sheets off new motorcycles, a time-honored tradition presumably dating back to the invention of both motorcycles and sheets. Concept bikes appear from some distant sci-fi future. Race bikes, dirt bikes, scooters and machines that barely fit into any existing category fill seemingly endless halls. Outside, motorcycles are being ridden aggressively for the enjoyment of very large groups of people.
If it has two wheels, someone has probably brought it to Milan.
And this year, so did we.
The LiveWire Group team assembled like the Avengers, arriving from Paris, Santa Cruz, New York City, Amsterdam, Montana, Oregon, Texas and points between with our most extensive lineup yet. We came armed with production bikes, prototypes, customs, polished aluminum, bright colors, dirt bikes, city bikes and at least one machine wearing flames.
No sheets required.
Setup day at EICMA is its own kind of spectacle. Imagine an extremely well-organized construction site colliding with a motorcycle shop, music festival and Formula 1 pit lane. Forklifts zip past carrying crates. Electric drills chirp and scream from every direction like mechanical bird calls. DJs test sound systems. Lights flicker to life overhead. Hundreds upon hundreds of motorcycles roll through the halls, and somehow, miraculously, nobody gets run over.
Meanwhile, the LiveWire contingent was fighting international jet lag with the help of a strategically located full-service café behind us in our friends at Harley-Davidson's booth.
“Un caffè doppio, per favore.”
Espresso was consumed. Then more espresso. Then, in the interest of maintaining international diplomacy and basic consciousness, perhaps one more espresso.
Eventually the bikes started arriving from international transport, and suddenly everyone was wide awake.
S4 Honcho Street. S4 Honcho Trail. S4 Honcho Skate. Dust Hightail. Dust Spur. The Nike x La Chance Café Honcho Trail. Dimitri Coste's custom S4 Honcho Street. And an S2 Alpinista Corsa wearing some gloriously off-script custom work from SMCO.
One by one they rolled into the booth, and despite all of us having spent weeks staring at these bikes through social media posts, presentations and computer screens, there is still something special about seeing the entire family together in the real world. Especially when some members of the family are prototypes that nobody outside LiveWire has seen in person.
Standing there surrounded by the bikes, something else became obvious. None of them seemed particularly interested in taking themselves too seriously. They looked like motorcycles you wanted to mess with. Ride. Customize. Get dirty. Show your friends. Take somewhere you didn't actually need to go.
You know. Actual motorcycle stuff.
Because for all the specifications, technology, market segments and Very Serious Motorcycle Opinions floating around this industry, there remains an occasionally overlooked truth: motorcycles are supposed to be fun.
We intend to keep it that way.
Setup ran longer than expected because setup always runs longer than expected. Eventually we called it, headed into Milan and conducted the evening's most important strategic planning session over plates of pasta.
Milan in November does this very well. The coats come out. Morning fog wraps itself around the Gothic spires of the Duomo. Risotto, ossobuco, steaming polenta and fried mozzarella suddenly seem less like food and more like basic survival equipment. Restaurants start shaving expensive white truffles onto things while you nod thoughtfully and pretend you're here strictly for cultural enrichment.
We had some laughs as we always do but the dinner conversations quickly switched from food to gameplans.
Tomorrow, the doors would open.
The first day of EICMA strictly belongs to media, creators, photographers, YouTubers and assorted professionally motorcycle-obsessed humans.
And almost immediately, we got mobbed.
It was a deluge. We'd be talking to one group about a bike while another three or four people hovered nearby waiting to ask about something else. Then someone would spot another motorcycle across the stand and we'd start the whole process over again. We were being pulled in every direction, usually by someone pointing at a bike and saying some version of, “Okay, tell me about that.” All this while communicating across a wide range of languages.
Honestly, we loved it.
What made this year particularly exciting was that there wasn't just one hero bike pulling people into the booth. There wasn't a single sacred object sitting on a pedestal beneath a spotlight waiting for everyone to admire it from the approved viewing angle. Our most diverse lineup yet meant different people kept finding different reasons to stop.
Dust Hightail brought the rowdier end of LiveWire to Milan, with 36 kW of power, a 4.4 kWh battery and a compact 246-pound package built around delivering an electric off-road experience. Sitting nearby was Dust Spur, a 155-pound prototype inspired by Hightail and intended to introduce more young riders of different skill levels to dirt tracks, recreational trails and private property. At 8 kW with a 2.76 kWh battery, Spur had people doing the classic EICMA maneuver: walking past, taking three more steps, stopping, turning around and coming back for another look.
Then there was Honcho.
S4 Honcho Street and Trail gave people the foundation of the platform, while Honcho Skate showed another personality entirely, one built for city streets, spontaneous stops and taking the shortcut simply because the shortcut looks more fun. The Nike x La Chance Café Honcho Trail brought a little piece of Paris culture into the booth, showing yet another way something as playful as Honcho can find its way into communities well beyond traditional motorcycling.
That's part of the idea with Honcho. It isn't terribly interested in telling you what kind of motorcyclist you're supposed to be.
It would rather know what kind of fun it can add to your random Tuesday.
And then there was Dimitri Coste's bike.
Oh boy.
Dimitri's 1980s BMX-inspired custom Honcho Street may have been the most photographed motorcycle in our booth. People weren't simply photographing it from behind the velvet rope. There was no velvet rope. They were climbing aboard, handing their phones to friends and getting their photos taken with it.
The bright colors, playful attitude and custom details just clicked with people. More importantly, people wanted to interact with it. There was no reverence required. No standing six feet back with hands politely clasped behind the body. Get closer. Sit on it. Imagine your version. That's what motorcycles are for.
We even debuted a prototype 3D-printed seat, which became a conversation piece of its own because people could not get over how comfortable it was. Karen and Bill Davidson stopped by the booth and were equally enthusiastic about Dimitri's build and its unapologetically bright color treatment.
The reaction reinforced something we've been hearing elsewhere: people want Honcho to be colorful, playful and customizable. They want to make it theirs.
And we didn't just talk about making Honcho your own. We handed people the controls. The S4 Honcho Customizer was live at the booth, letting people choose a frame, swap the plastics and get properly weird with the livery. People had a blast building combinations, changing their minds and imagining what their Honcho could look like. There are no velvet ropes here either. The only real rule is to make it yours. Make it weird. Make it fun.
Motorcycles could always use a little more personality.
Speaking of taking things beautifully off-script, our friends Aaron and Shaun at SMCO brought their particular flavor of madness to the S2 Alpinista Corsa.
The bike wears custom 3D-printed aluminum bodywork polished straight into hot-rod territory, along with carbon wheels, a custom Saddlemen race seat and flames because, frankly, who doesn't love flames?
The idea grew from the clear, color-tinted bodywork SMCO originally created for the 1:1 Anti Social Social Club Del Mar. Eventually Aaron and Shaun asked the important question: what happens if you take that same factory-fit concept and do it in aluminum?
Well, this happens.
Clear and metal-clad, these machines have gone racing in Biarritz at Wheels and Waves, charged up the hill at Goodwood and now landed at EICMA. Seeing people crowd around the Alpinista Corsa offered another little glimpse at where customization can go when creativity, technology and motorcycles are allowed to collide without somebody standing nearby holding a clipboard and asking everyone to please calm down.
Some things don't need to be sensible.
Sometimes they need flames.
Day one done. Naturally, it was time to go ride some motorcycles with our friends.
The entire crew piled into a giant taxi van and headed north to Milan’s LiveWire dealer MotorGreen, to pick up our bikes for one of our favorite EICMA traditions: Reload Land's Silent Ride.
Milan traffic was properly Milan traffic, but our driver appeared to possess supernatural abilities. He threaded a van through traffic with the precision of a MotoGP rider and, we are absolutely certain, did not make a single other driver angry in the process.
Probably.
Waiting for us was an incredible crew that included Micah Toll from Electrek, YouTuber Max BLD, Dris Abdi from Rolling Stone, Fuego from La Chance Café, members of the REV'IT! team, Dimitri Coste and plenty more. Soon roughly 60 to 70 electric riders were rolling through Milan together, with the LiveWire crew joining aboard S2 Alpinista and eight S4 Honcho Streets alongside LiveWire owners and an eclectic collection of electric motorcycles from across the industry.
Different bikes. Different brands. Different people. Same energy.
After an entire day surrounded by booths, lights, presentations and carefully arranged motorcycles, there was something wonderfully simple about it.
We went riding.
Nobody unveiled anything. Nobody needed a spotlight. Nobody needed to explain which market segment any of us or our bikes belonged to.
It was just a bunch of people riding motorcycles through Milan after dark.
Because pushing electric motorcycle culture forward isn't about everybody riding exactly the same thing. It's about showing up, riding together, making friends, trading stories and having some fun while you're at it.
The motorcycles are always changing.
The fun part shouldn't.
From Day 3 onward, EICMA opened to the public.
And Italy showed up.
The halls filled. The aisles disappeared beneath a river of humanity. Cameras came out. Questions started flying. And for the next several days, we got to do one of the most valuable things we can do as a motorcycle company: put our motorcycles in front of real people and listen.
People sat on Honcho and imagined where they'd take it. They took selfies on Dimitri's custom. They inspected Hightail and Spur from every angle. They leaned over SMCO's aluminum bodywork trying to understand how it was made. They asked about performance, customization, riding, charging and everything else they could think of.
And we loved every bit of it.
You can spend months building presentations, studying market research, digging through spreadsheets and debating what riders might want. Those things matter. But there's something different about putting motorcycles in front of thousands of people from around the world and simply watching what happens.
And what kept happening was play.
People climbed on things. They pointed things out to their friends. They took photos. They laughed. They imagined paint schemes. They asked what could be customized. They talked about where they'd ride.
This is perhaps worth mentioning because motorcycling, like anything people love deeply, can occasionally become very serious about itself. There are categories and rules and specifications and traditions and opinions about the correct motorcycle, the correct gear, the correct displacement and probably the correct angle at which one should stand while admiring a freshly unveiled motorcycle beneath dramatic convention-center lighting.
We respect the passion.
But sometimes you also need to throw a leg over something fun and go mess around.
Some people came into the booth already knowing exactly what they wanted to see. Others wandered past, spotted something colorful or unexpected, stopped in their tracks and came over to investigate. We talked with hardcore motorcyclists, electric-curious riders, younger riders, industry veterans, creators, families and plenty of people discovering LiveWire for the first time.
Those conversations are why you drag motorcycles around the world.
You get to see the reaction happen in real time.
And the reaction we kept seeing was curiosity, enthusiasm and a willingness to imagine motorcycling a little differently. Not ditching everything that came before it. Not declaring the past irrelevant. Just leaving the door open for some new ideas, new riders and maybe a little more mischief.
By the end of the show, our feet were cooked, our voices were hanging on by a thread and we'd answered more questions than any of us could possibly count. But we also walked away reminded that there is a whole lot of enthusiasm out there for where LiveWire is headed.
And that is a pretty good feeling.
Eventually, even EICMA ends.
On our final night in Milan, the crew headed downtown to do what any team should do after moving motorcycles across continents, building a booth, talking to approximately one billion people and walking enough kilometers to qualify as an endurance sport.
We feasted as locals do.
Antipasti appeared. Then pizza. Then pasta. Then probably more pasta. Wine was poured, glasses went up, and we toasted a week that represented an enormous amount of hard work from an equally enormous number of people.
But here's the thing.
It was FUN.
And maybe that's the biggest thing we're bringing home from Milan.
We showed up at one of the biggest motorcycle parties on Earth with arguably the broadest, most playful and most experimental LiveWire lineup we've ever put together. People noticed. They climbed on the bikes. They photographed them. They asked questions. They told us what they liked. They imagined what they'd change and where they'd ride.
They played with motorcycles.
Imagine that.
Most importantly, Milan reminded us that the future of motorcycling doesn't have to look exactly like its past. It can respect where we've been without being trapped by it. It can be electric. It can get dirty. It can be weird. It can be colorful. It can wear polished aluminum bodywork and flames. It can take the unnecessary shortcut. It can blast silently through Milan at night with 70 new friends for no better reason than that sounds like a hell of a good time.
Maybe moving motorcycling forward also means bringing a little something back.
The curiosity. The experimentation. The sense that you don't need permission to make the thing your own. The willingness to occasionally stop worrying about what a motorcycle is supposed to be and remember why we all got hooked on these ridiculous machines in the first place.
Motorcycles are supposed to be fun.
We haven't forgotten.
Judging by the crowds in Milan, neither has everyone else.
We're leaving Milan tired, inspired and more fired up than ever about what's ahead.
The future is bright. Let's go.
Paris is wonderful. Paris is beautiful. Paris has architecture, culture, fashion, and enough espresso to power a small nation.
LiveWire Group heads to EICMA with its most expansive lineup yet, with the European debut of S4 Honcho™ Trail and Street, world debuts of S4 Honcho Skate™ and DUST Spur™, and the first public showing of the LiveWire DUST Hightail™
Hundreds of Dealer Rides. One Overwhelming Conclusion: Honcho Delivers (the fun).
Sometimes the universe has a messed-up sense of humor.
LiveWire Takes on the Greatest Motorsport Garden Party on Earth
