CLEVELAND — John Lutsch has an interest in motorcycles even though he doesn't ride them.

What You Need To Know

  • ​The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum at Western Reserve Historical Society has a new exhibit called "A Century of the American Motorcycle"

  • The exhibit features motorcycles from 1905 to 2021

  • The exhibit will be on display for six months​

"Scared to death," said Lutsch. 

His interest is fueled by his fascination with how these bikes are designed.

"I do like kind of all things mechanical," said Lutsch. "Where they really interest me is personally is the design aesthetics."

It's one of the reasons he's so excited about the new exhibit at the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum at Western Reserve Historical Society. The exhibit takes guests through a century of American motorcycles, the oldest one in the exhibit being from 1905.

"This represents sort of the really beginning stages of motorcycles when the bikes were actually derived from bicycles. They shared a lot of the same components, the same frames, and you know people were just thinking along the lines of how do we incorporate a specific motor into that frame," said Lutsch.

Visitors get to see the evolution of the bikes from small engines to much larger ones, some with pedals and some without.

"They start to get bigger. You'll see that as time evolves they kind of go from bicycle seat to proper motorcycle seat," said Lutsch.

The bikes in this exhibit are all American but Lutsch said another motorcycle exhibit will take its place in 2022 and feature European and Asian bikes.