Guidance for your first ride, from people who remember theirs
Derringer Cycles is a beginner-first motorcycle publication. Our whole job is to make your first year on two wheels safer, cheaper, and a lot more fun.
Almost everyone who rides remembers the same feeling: standing next to a motorcycle for the first time, equal parts excited and terrified, with no idea which of the internet's thousand loud opinions to trust. We started Derringer Cycles to be the calm, honest voice we wish we'd had back then.
What we believe
The right first bike isn't the fastest or the coolest — it's the one that lets you concentrate on learning. Good gear is worth buying before the fun stuff. And the people who gatekeep motorcycling, or treat caution as weakness, are wrong. Riding is for everyone willing to take it seriously, and taking it seriously is exactly how you get to enjoy it for decades.
How we write
We give real opinions, including which bikes we'd avoid and why. We're honest about trade-offs — a bike that's brilliant for one rider can be wrong for another, and we'll tell you which is which. We don't chase spec-sheet drama, and we don't fear-monger. When we recommend gear or a service, it's something we'd put our own name behind.
Where a guide links to a partner — say, rider insurance or a helmet — it may be an affiliate link that helps fund our work. It never changes what we recommend or the order we recommend it in. If we wouldn't send a friend there, it doesn't go in.
The name
Derringer began as a maker of bespoke, board-track-inspired motorbikes covered by Wired, Vogue and Robb Report. You can still see those originals in the bespoke collection. We carry that same eye for craft into work that's a little more useful: getting you safely onto your first motorcycle.