Cool Movie Bikes

[Gone in 60]

On weekends, as I give tours in the basement of the Petersen (known as "The Vault"), I do an early morning walk-through of the upper floors to note anything new or changed. That way if someone asks me about a specific vehicle, I'll know if it's up there or not. 

On my Saturday morning spin, I noticed two recently added movie bikes that are pretty neat. The Ducati from Matrix Reloaded (some pretty blatant but cool product placement!) and the Honda CL350 ridden in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Had no idea what that bike was till I saw this!

[Cormanus]

Who funds your museum, Gone?

[Gone in 60]

Who funds your museum, Gone?

Lots of sources. Regular admission fees, tours, private functions. Plus there is an annual fund raising gala to attract high dollar donors. 

I conduct a “behind the scenes” tour that’s pretty spendy. I laugh when I think that there are people who will pay to listen to me for two hours at a time.

[1973cb750]

thats neat speaking of movie bikes I love the Ducati in Tron sport classic i believe

[Gone in 60]

Ducati is pretty smart when it comes to product placement! I liked seeing that bike in Tron as well.

[misterprofessionality]

Triumph is the king of all product placement.  especially because they're extremely sneaky about it.  Triumph gives away free bikes to any advertiser.  It can be an ad about anything.  hair product.  pharmaceuticals.  food.  even cars.  Triumph just gives them the bike for free if they have an ad that involves filming somebody on a bike, and the only stipulations they make are the rider is not allowed to look bad, and they can't damage the bike on camera.  So the end result of this is there are a BUNCH of commercials out there that are for other products, but there's somebody looking cool on a triumph somewhere in the shot.  They've managed to find a way to market their bikes by just making it a baseline analog for "COOL" whenever another advertiser needs to make a character in a commercial look cool.  I even saw an ad for a Dodge SUV a couple of years ago and it included shots of the car racing around on a bridge with a bike next to it and the bike PASSES the car at the end of the ad!  the ad was supposed to be for the SUV and the bike ended up looking cooler.  guess what....it was a triumph.

seriously, start counting the number of non-motorcycle ads you see with a triumph somewhere in them. its astonishing.

[The A-man]

I read this a few hours ago, then happened to see a drug commercial and sure enough there was a guy polishing his Triumph!

[Cormanus]

I've been looking at an Amazon commercial too often lately and I'm pretty sure the young man in that is riding a Triumph.

[flynrider]

Gone in 60 said :   " I laugh when I think that there are people who will pay to listen to me for two hours at a time."


 That's interesting.   I happen to know people who will pay good money for me to shut up about motorcycles.  

[Gone in 60]

I’ll keep an eye out for Triumphs in advertising now.

I remember the Louis C.K. tv show years ago. Before he was outed and all of the bad stuff happened with him, I sort of clicked with a bald, schlubby fat guy trying to make it in life. Over the course of a few episodes, he wandered into a Triumph dealer, bought a Bonneville and learned to ride. As part of the character arc, he crashed the bike (nice work by a stunt rider) and his recovery became part of the show.