Fact: Motorcycles are faster, more agile, better looking, and are cheaper to own and maintain than cars. True or false?

This myth of 'cheap' transportation has been circulated again and again, by future riders when trying to convince someone (or themselves) that buying a motorcycle is the only logical financial choice. Unfortunately, motorcycles may not be as cheap as originally thought. So when it comes to the old question "Are motorcycles cheaper than cars?" The short answer is: Sometimes.

For the subject of this article we'll take a popular car, and a popular sport bike and compare the costs of owning them. For our car we've selected the Civic coup dx which is a small 2 door economy car that rings in at $14,810. It gets 30 mpg city, and 38 freeway and generates 140 HP out of its 1.8-liter,SOHC i-VTEC ® 4-cylinder engine. For the sports bike we've chosen the 600cc Honda f4i. The f4i is a really popular motorcycle that costs $8,499, gets around 100 HP, and gets decent fuel economy at 35 mpg city 45 freeway. Right off the bat we can see that the motorcycle is a little more than half the price of the car.

So now you have your brand new car or motorcycle, one of the first things you'll want to do (and if you are in some states, required BY LAW to do) is get some insurance. I used my own information to judge what the insurance would cost me, and for the record I'm a male in their early 20's with a spotless driving record (not even a speeding ticket!). The insurer I chose for the sake of this article was Geico , but I'm sure if you shopped around you would find other places that would be more or less expensive depending on your situation. I think what I've found to be pretty accurate general rule when comparing cars and motorcycles. To insure a 2007 Honda Civic Coup DX it was $189.50 for the bare minimum coverage. When I typed in the same information and chose to insure the 2007 Honda f4i, my monthly payment jumped to $388.91 per month! That's quite the increase! If we went off these numbers, by purchasing the car I would be saving $2,392.92 per year, and I would make up the price difference between the motorcycle and the car in just under 3 years.

The insurance isn't the only place where motorcycles are more expensive, maintenance is another area that will take a chunk out of your wallet. The typical car tire should last you between 35,000 and 50,000 miles depending on the tire and your driving habits. With motorcycle tires you will only get around 9-11k miles out of them before they need to be replaced, and that's if you are just doing easy commuting. If you are taking your bike into the hills and grinding the pegs on every corner you may only get 6,000 miles out of them or less depending on the brand of tire. That means you will be buying new tires 3-5 times more often than you would if you were driving a car!!! It's really starting to add up now!

With a car you are protected in a nice comfy steel and leather cage, and you have all sorts of safety features like airbags and crumple zones that will protect you in an accident. These things all come standard on modern cars, but there is nothing like that that comes standard for a motorcycle. If you want to be protected on 2 wheels then you are going to need to buy riding gear like a full face helmet, leather gloves, riding pants, boots, and the all important (and cool looking) leather motorcycle jacket. These things do not come cheap though, and depending on how good you are at finding deals you will be spending between $500-2000.

Now I know motorcycle gear isn't REQUIRED, but I would definitely recommend it. Road-rash is like taking a belt sander to large patches of your skin, and once you get to the hospital they have to scrub out the wound with steel brushes (NOT JOKING) without any pain killers because it thins the blood. The $1,000 you spend on motorcycle gear will not only keep you away from the steel brushes, but it will also prevent you from paying gigantic medical bills.

As you can see when you add up the numbers a motorcycle becomes just as expensive, if not MORE expensive than your basic economy car. One way to keep those costs down is to buy an inexpensive motorcycle like the Kawasaki Ninja 250. The ninja costs only $2,999 and it gets 30 mpg more than the Honda f4i! By purchasing a good beginner motorcycle you will also be building skills that will transfer well to larger displacement bikes and will prevent you from making stupid mistakes that will cost you money (like dropping the bike in the parking lot!).

>>UPDATE: I've gotten a lot of comments about my insurance quotes and where I got the numbers. After some diggin around in my inbox I found the e-mail geico sent me, it is as follows

Your total premium for a 12 month policy will be $4667.00.
The details of the coverages and premiums for 2007 HONDA CBR600F4 are:

Bodily Injury Liability(BI) 15/30 $544.00
Property Damage Liability(PD) 5M $166.00
Medical Payments(MED) 500 $87.00
Uninsured & Underinsured Motorist(UM&UIM) 15/30 $398.00
Comprehensive(COMP) 250 $831.00
Uninsured Motorist Property Damage(UMPD) REJ $.00
Collision(COLL) 250/W $2641.00
Towing(TOW) REJ $.00


So the thing that really killed me was the comprehensive and collision insurance (which I have found out is not required by california law). If you don't have these options then it would lessen the cost quite a bit. Sometimes if you finance a motorcycle you are REQUIRED to carry comprehensive insurance, so keep that in mind when choosing your new motorcycle. The bottom line is that generally the higher the CC the motorcycle (and the newer it is), the more you are going to pay for insurance.

I went back to my quote and I unselected EVERY option it would let me, and this is the quote that I recieved. I'm assuming it wouldn't let you unselect something that california law requires you to have, but i'm not entirely positive.

Your total premium for a 12 month policy will be $710.00.
The details of the coverages and premiums for 2007 HONDA CBR600F4 are:

Bodily Injury Liability(BI) 15/30 $544.00
Property Damage Liability(PD) 5M $166.00
Medical Payments(MED) REJ $.00
Uninsured & Underinsured Motorist(UM&UIM) REJ $.00
Uninsured Motorist Property Damage(UMPD) REJ $.00
Comprehensive(COMP) REJ $.00
Collision(COLL) REJ $.00


So if you unselect every possible option that the Geico form will let you, you will actually be paying LESS with the CBR than you would with the civic! That's quite a shock! I don't think I will be writing a "Motorcycles are definitely cheaper than cars" article anytime soon though, because in my opinion the frequent tire changes/oil changes/gear costs still make the motorcycle as expensive, if not slightly MORE expensive than an economy car. The numbers all boil down to what your personal situation is and what risks you are willing to take with your bike and your body.

Update #2!!! After shopping around for my own insurance I found that state farms offers significantly cheaper insurance rates compared to geico, so definitely check them out. Ok, end update :)

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