The Wonderful Mechanical World Of Japanese Motorcycle Museums

I love a good museum. Any kind of museum, in fact. Here in Detroit, we have some really amazing museums—art museums, two aviation museums, history museums, African American and Arab-American cultural museums, etc.—some of which I'm even a member of. What we don't have, surprisingly, is a lot of automaker-specific transport museums. You have to admit, that's pretty strange for a town that basically invented cars and car culture. I mean, yeah, there's the GM Heritage Center way the hell up in the Northeast suburbs—which may as well be Mars as far as I'm concerned—and the late lamented Chrysler museum which closed years ago. There's also the Henry Ford Museum, but that's not dedicated solely to the company and its achievements. Weird, right?

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You know where there are a lot of OEM-specific transport museums? Japan! Surprise surprise, right? I recently learned about Japanese Corporate Museums in that same Mighty Car Mods episode where I learned about the rad Daihatsu Tsubasa. This being me, I immediately wondered if the Big Four had museums like Daihatsu's and it turns out they do! They're pretty sweet, too. Let's take a virtual trip over to the Land of the Rising Sun and check out the various corporate museums curated by Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha.

NOTE: I have, sadly, never been to any of these museums. This virtual tour is based on what I could glean from the museums' websites, Trip Advisor, IN HAMAMATSU magazine, and various online reviews. If any of you have ever been to one or more of these places let us know in the comments.

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