Solvang Motorcycle Museum
Solvang Motorcycle Museum
Solvang, California is a small town northwest of Santa Barbara in the Santa Ynez valley. This place is known to most as a tourist attraction town where one can find Danish food, windmills and buildings painted to look like they belong in a small European hamlet. To motorcyclists, it is the home to a sampling of Virgil Elings’ motorcycle collection known as the “Solvang Motorcycle Museum”.
Word has it that less than half of his bikes are on display here at any one time so you can know that the next time you pass through there will probably be something on the floor that you haven’t seen before. For a small fee of $10 you can spend as much time as you want looking the bikes over. There are no velvet ropes or glass panels to keep your at a distance, here you are able inspect the bikes as closely as you desire. Just don’t touch them.
Here are a handful of pictures that we took. To see the rest cruise through our gallery HERE
Britten V1000
Yale Twin
Moto Guzzi GP
Honda RC181 - Mike Hailwood
Crocker
To get to Solvang from LA, just take the 101 North to the Buelton/Solvang exit. Then take hwy 246 into Solvang. Turn right a few blocks into town on Alisal. The museum is in a small shopping complex about 1/3 of a mile down the road on the left.
View Larger Map
Show us your prized motorcycle by joining Teknikka for Free by clicking HERE
Visit the Solvang Motorcycle Museum website at www.motosolvang.com
Tags: Antique Motorcycles, Classic Motorcycles, Motorcycle Museum, Solvang
January 22nd, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
In June 2009 we read on the website that the price of admissions to the museum was 5.00. So the three of us set out and traveled the 200 miles from the central valley to see the bikes in June. We handed the young hispanic man 5.00 dollars but he said it was 10.00 dollars. We explained to him that the web site said it was 5.00 and it should honor it. He said sorry but its 10.00. We paid the ten bucks but felt we were right. The website back then said 5.00 dollars and the museum should honor it since we were already there. We think the museum owes us 15.00 dollars since we were overcharged. What do you think? thank you, Brian.
January 22nd, 2010 @ 11:47 pm
In my opinion $10 is a smokin’ deal to get up close and personal with those bikes. I don’t think twice about driving 500 miles each way to visit when there is something new.
It’s a small donation to the upkeep of a first class collection. Heck, leave an extra Andrew Jackson just because it’s a bad-ass bunch of bikes.
It costs ten bucks to get into a swap meet full of rusty heaps these days.
(By the way, it appears the website shows the price change was back in May 2008.)
May 11, 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080402112530/www.motosolvang.com/overview.htm
June 10, 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080624064932/www.motosolvang.com/overview.htm
February 3rd, 2010 @ 10:27 am
IMO, don’t even gripe about $15, really not worth the wasted time for both parties. There isn’t much principal to be had or if they honestly forgot to update there website fees. Everyone makes mistakes. If it was like $100, then thats a huge difference. Hope this helps to really let this go and perhaps go back there again without prejudgement. Maybe you mis-read it or not. Whatever! I drove out from Los Angeles to visit this place few weeks ago, and it was awesome seeing the collectors vision and the history of so many bikes emphasized on racing. I spent 2 hours studying bikes that I won’t ever see again soon. The “Vincent Lighting”(fastest bike of the era), “Brough SS100″(T.E Laurence was killed on), plus The “James” (Winston Churchill rode) to name a few. If you wanted to see a museum like this elsewhere you will no-doubt pay more and nothing of this collection anywhere in the state of California. Cheers!
June 7th, 2010 @ 8:50 pm
I live in the area, and the museum use to be free. I was walking around Solvang one day, and looked inside a bldg, and there were all these mc’s. The gal inside opened up the door and said I could come in. there were mostly really old american and 50′s-60′s brit stuff, but I did see an MV Agusta racer that hadn’t been destroyed.
Just a few years ago there wasn’t that many people visiting the place. Now when I go by there on the weekends, there are always MC’s out front. It was free for a while, then it went to $2, and then to $5, and then to $10. I think the guy is just trying to cover his overhead. With more people showing up, there is a need to accommodate them. The guy who owns the bikes also owns the whole shopping complex where it is located.
December 11th, 2010 @ 10:50 pm
wow very nice!