So I attempted to say in my book every last thing I could think of to say about these machines that both capture and express the human imagination. Why had no one ever told me motorcycles were so transporting? Why didn’t everyone know how affecting they were, how they enriched and condensed experience? How they were a powerful force for personal good? The impetus for writing was, quite simply, unbridled joy. Twenty-five years have elapsed between the time I began writing The Perfect Vehicle and the moment you are reading these words. Introduction to ‘The Perfect Vehicle’ Spanish Edition Scroll down for that introduction, and visit to order her books.įlashback to August 1997, the issue that featured our review of Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s “The Perfect Vehicle” We also reprinted Pierson’s introduction to the Spanish edition of the book, which was published in 2021 by La Mala Suerte Ediciones, the first and only publisher devoted to motorcycle books in Spanish. On the 25th anniversary of The Perfect Vehicle, considered one of the best books ever written about motorcycles, we reprinted a review published in the August 1997 issue of Rider and which can be found on our website here.
I had been to the shop before, and my then-girlfriend was friends with the proprietor. When I read Pierson’s account of buying a Moto Guzzi Lario from a small European bike shop called The Spare Parts Company tucked away on a narrow street in the Old City section of Philadelphia, an area I explored regularly on late-night pub crawls and weekend wanderings, I felt an even stronger connection to her book. Not only did Pierson artfully articulate the full spectrum of emotions, sensations, and experiences that are familiar to any motorcyclist and evoke the “ride to live, live to ride” credo, she educated me about the exciting new world I had come to inhabit. Within the first year of my own love affair with motorcycling, I read – no, I devoured – The Perfect Vehicle. In 1998, while struggling my way through graduate school in Philadelphia, I bought a motorcycle and learned to ride. In 1997, Melissa Holbrook Pierson published The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, a delightful book that chronicles her love affair with motorcycles as well as the unique cultural and historical landscape of the two-wheeled world. Melissa Holbrook Pierson, author of “The Perfect Vehicle” and other books.
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