Robert Talbott’s Antique Motorcycle Museum

Nestled somewhere in the back of every motor-nut’s brain is an addled group of cells dedicated to holding the fantasy of owning every bike you want—always imagining each of the loud or smooth or iconic machines that has ever tickled your proverbial fancy, and then reimagining them under one roof. A dream garage. Robert Talbott is a wheelhead like any of us, burdened by the same addiction and unable to escape the familiar illusion of the dream garage. Like any dreams in life, some of us get closer than others, and he’s doing a better job than most.

Welcome to the MotoTalbott Collection. After 50 years of motorcycling and 15 years of genuinely enthusiastic collecting, Robb Talbott is opening the doors to a new motorcycle museum in Carmel Valley, California. It holds 150 examples of art and machinery blended into metal and bolted to two wheels.

It has a specific taste, which might be the best part. It’s not a collection of the rarest, most sought-after machines. That would be all well and good, but this collection is of bikes that he likes. Motorcycles with stories that he thinks are interesting.

This makes a collection all the more dynamic, we think. Money will buy nearly any lump of metal. But it takes personality and perseverance to discover drama within a person or an era that only really comes to light in the eyes of true motorcyclists via the chrome in a fender, or a rusted patch on a fuel tank.

Talbott started riding in the mid-1960s, first on a Honda Dream, “black, with the square fenders. I didn’t own it but I got excited when I rode it” he says, in a matter-of-fact way. Then a Trail 50, followed by a smattering of off-road and dual sport bikes that will tickle the memory banks in riders of a certain vintage. Bridgestone, Suzuki, Sachs, a Jawa that he could, “never get to run right,” and eventually a Yamaha DT-1.

He graduated college, eventually settling into a life of raising children, growing grapes, and making wine. Motorcycles settled gently into the background of his life, simmering on the back burner but not forgotten. In the late 1990s he began riding more, buying a modern iteration of the Triumph Bonneville among others. He bought a Harley bagger in 2003 and rode it to Nova Scotia from California, which began his love affair with long distance riding. Eventually, in an effort to visit distributors of his wine, Talbott rode more than 12,000 miles in 46 days covering 35 states, on his BMW R1150GS.

Talbott is a fanatic, in the purest sense. His enthusiasm overflows and with the extra energy he has put together this museum. It’s that silly little section of his head that holds dreams, and proof that they come alive now and again. Robb Talbott’s dream garage is coming to life in Carmel Valley, California right before our eyes. We’ll be shouting from the rooftops when it opens later this summer.