The US imported $2.7 billion worth of motorcycles and scooters in 2024, and just three countries (China, Japan, and Thailand) supplied 64% of those units, according to IndexBox market data. That’s the market reality even in the category where America has two of the most famous motorcycle brands in the world. We found eight manufacturers with genuine US assembly operations, though for a couple of them, which specific model you buy changes the answer. Below is the complete list, organized across legacy brands, electric manufacturers, and boutique builders, along with tips for doing your own research and a look at popular brands not made here.
Legacy American Brands
Harley-Davidson and Indian Motorcycle are the two brands most people picture when they hear “American motorcycle.” Both assemble domestically, both manufacture their own engines on US soil, and both have been doing this for decades. The nuances are worth knowing, particularly for Harley, where not every current model qualifies.
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson is the most recognizable American motorcycle brand and also the one that requires the most attention to which specific model you’re buying. The company was founded in 1903 by William Harley and Arthur Davidson in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it remains headquartered today. Final assembly for the core US-market lineup happens at a 1.5 million-square-foot plant in York, Pennsylvania, which handles Touring, Softail, CVO, and Trike models. Engines are manufactured separately at the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, facility. That puts Harley in rare company: very few vehicle brands of any kind assemble domestically and build their own powertrains here too. Like every large-scale manufacturer, though, Harley builds those bikes with parts from a global supply base, so “assembled and powered by American factories” is the accurate frame, not “100% US-sourced.”
The catch: for the 2025 model year, Harley shifted production of its Revolution Max-powered models, the Pan America adventure tourer, the Sportster S, and the Nightster, to its factory in Thailand, a move its machinists’ union called a broken commitment. Then the company reversed course. In June 2026, Harley announced that machining, powertrain assembly, painting, and final assembly for those models will return to its Pennsylvania and Wisconsin plants, while Thailand keeps building them for other markets. Until US production ramps back up, a new Pan America, Sportster S, or Nightster on a showroom floor was built in Thailand. The Touring and Softail lineup (the Street Glide, Road Glide, Fat Boy, Heritage Classic, and related models) never left York. When you’re shopping with domestic assembly in mind, check the specific model and model year, not just the badge on the tank.
Indian Motorcycle
Indian Motorcycle traces its history to 1901, when George Hendee and Oscar Hedstrom founded the company in Springfield, Massachusetts, two years before Harley-Davidson existed. The original company ceased production in 1953. The brand was restarted in 2011 when Polaris Industries acquired the Indian name and relocated production to Spirit Lake, Iowa, where motorcycles are assembled today. Engines are manufactured at a separate plant in Osceola, Wisconsin. The same sourcing caveat that applies to Harley applies here: assembly and engines are domestic, while components like electronics, tires, and various hardware come from global suppliers.
In February 2026, Polaris completed the sale of a majority stake in Indian to private equity firm Carolwood LP, and the brand moved its global headquarters to a new facility in Golden Valley, Minnesota. The Spirit Lake assembly plant and Osceola engine facility remain active under the new ownership. The arrangement is only months old, though, and we’ll be watching whether anything changes on the manufacturing side. Indian’s current lineup spans cruiser and touring models across the Scout, Chief, and Pursuit families, all assembled in Iowa.
Electric Manufacturers
Three manufacturers on this list build electric motorcycles, and that changes the supply chain question. No commercial US battery cell supply chain exists for this application yet, so every electric motorcycle assembled here still gets its single most expensive component from Asia. Keep that in mind as you read these three: “assembled in the USA” is the ceiling for an electric bike right now, not a shortcoming specific to any one brand.
LiveWire
LiveWire started inside Harley-Davidson as its electric vehicle division, launched in 2021, and became a publicly traded independent company in September 2022. Harley-Davidson retained about 70 percent ownership after the spinoff, and the two brands remain tightly linked operationally: all LiveWire motorcycles are assembled at Harley-Davidson’s plant in York, Pennsylvania. In 2024, LiveWire consolidated its operations to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, closing a separate engineering facility it had maintained in Mountain View, California.
The current lineup includes four electric street models: the S2 Del Mar, S2 Mulholland, S2 Alpinista, and LiveWire One, priced from about $12,000 to $16,500. LiveWire was the first publicly traded electric motorcycle company in the United States at the time of its 2022 listing. The battery packs are supplied by Samsung SDI, whose cells are manufactured in South Korea, so the honest label here is a US-assembled motorcycle built around an imported battery.
Zero Motorcycles
Zero Motorcycles was founded in 2006 by Neal Saiki, a former NASA engineer, in Santa Cruz, California, and grew out of early prototypes built under the company’s original name, Electricross. The company moved to a larger facility in Scotts Valley, California, where engineering and R&D operations remain based. In October 2025, Zero relocated its global corporate headquarters to the Netherlands, following its largest customer base to Europe.
The US-market caveat: motorcycles sold in the United States are assembled in Scotts Valley, while international models are assembled at a facility operated by Integrated Micro-Electronics in Laguna, Philippines. Where your Zero was built depends on which market it was produced for. If you’re buying new in the US, the bike was assembled in California, though as with every electric brand here, the battery cells inside it were not made in America.
Curtiss Motorcycles
The company now known as Curtiss Motorcycle Co. has operated since 1991, when attorney H. Matthew Chambers founded it in Baton Rouge, Louisiana under the name Confederate Motorcycles. The operation moved to Birmingham, Alabama after Hurricane Katrina damaged the facilities in 2005. In 2017, Chambers pivoted to all-electric production and renamed the company Curtiss Motorcycle Co., a reference to aviation and motorcycle pioneer Glenn Curtiss, who set a land speed record of 136 miles per hour on a V8-powered motorcycle in 1907.
The company’s current product is The 1, a luxury electric motorcycle hand assembled in Birmingham. It’s available in solo and two-seat configurations across several finishes. Curtiss has stated plans to vertically integrate the manufacturing of wear components over time, bringing more production in-house. At the moment, The 1 sits at the low-production, high-price end of this list.
Boutique Builders
These three manufacturers build motorcycles in small volumes by hand. The scale is completely different from the brands above. None of them is trying to compete on price, and each one occupies a specific niche: massive V8-powered American cruisers, ultra-premium bespoke sport bikes, and hand-built retro lightweights.
Boss Hoss
Boss Hoss Cycles does something no other manufacturer on this list does: it puts a car engine in a motorcycle. Founded in 1990 by Monte Warne in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the company built its first V8-powered bike in a 5,000-square-foot Dyersburg workshop. Warne came from a background as a commercial aircraft pilot and certified airframe and powerplant technician, which shows in how these machines are engineered. The operation has since expanded to a 22,000-square-foot facility on seven acres in Dyersburg, where all vehicles are still assembled by hand using a patented frame design and custom components.
The lineup covers two-wheeled cruisers and several trike configurations, all powered by Chevrolet V8 engines ranging from a 6,200cc LS3 (445 horsepower) to a 7,439cc 454 Small Block (563 horsepower). Every build is completed to customer specifications at the Dyersburg facility. These are not subtle machines.
Arch Motorcycle
Arch Motorcycle Company came out of a private commission. In 2007, actor Keanu Reeves hired custom motorcycle builder Gard Hollinger to rebuild a Harley-Davidson. The project evolved over several years until the finished machine shared almost nothing with the original, and in 2011, the two launched Arch as a production company in Los Angeles. The current lineup has three models, the KRGT-1, the 1s, and the METHOD143, all designed, engineered, and assembled at the company’s Los Angeles facility.
The engines are sourced from S&S Cycle, based in Viola, Wisconsin, which supplies a 124-cubic-inch (2,032 cc) air-cooled V-twin. Production relies on 3D printing, CNC machining, and in-house fabrication for components including billet aluminum swingarms. Every bike is built to customer specification with input on aesthetics and ergonomics before production begins. The 1s carries a price tag of $128,000.
Janus Motorcycles
Richard Worsham and Devin Biek founded Janus Motorcycles in 2011 in Goshen, Indiana, and began delivering bikes to customers in 2013. The operation is hand-built and small-scale, and the majority of each motorcycle’s components come from suppliers within 20 miles of the shop. The four current models, the Halcyon 250, Halcyon 450, Gryffin 250, and Gryffin 450, are designed to evoke the look of motorcycles from the 1920s and 1930s.
The big caveat: engines are imported from China. Janus is transparent about this. The frames, fuel tanks, exhaust systems, and leather seats are all fabricated at the Goshen facility, and the company builds each bike to order and sells directly to buyers. If domestic engine sourcing is a firm requirement, this one doesn’t meet it, but the assembly and handwork are genuinely Indiana-made.
How to Find Motorcycles Made in the USA
The list above gets you started. This section is for when you’re evaluating a brand we haven’t covered, or when you want to verify a manufacturing claim on your own.
What Does “Made in the USA” Mean?
The Federal Trade Commission requires that a product labeled “made in the USA” have “all or virtually all” of its components manufactured domestically, from raw material sourcing through final assembly. No agency pre-approves these claims. Companies self-certify, which means the label can be misused, and enforcement usually starts only after someone files a complaint.
For a detailed breakdown of how that standard works in practice, read our guide to verifying US manufacturing and origin claims.
Materials
Every motorcycle is built from a stack of raw materials, engineered sub-assemblies, and electronics, each with its own sourcing story. Understanding where those inputs come from helps you read “assembled in the USA” claims realistically: the frame may have been welded here while the engine cases, chips, and tires came from somewhere else entirely.
Steel
Steel is the backbone of most motorcycle frames, engine blocks, exhaust systems, and fasteners. The US ranked fourth in global crude steel production in 2024, behind China, India, and Japan, with 79.5 million metric tons, per World Steel Association figures. Nucor (20.7 million tons), Cleveland-Cliffs (16.4 million), and US Steel (14.2 million) lead domestic output, according to GMK Center’s ranking of 2024 producers. Domestic steel is widely available, so a brand claiming US-sourced steel for its frame is making a credible claim in a way that aluminum or rubber simply is not.
Aluminum
Aluminum goes into motorcycle frames (particularly on modern sport and adventure designs), engine cases, wheels, and suspension components. The US was once the world’s largest aluminum producer, but the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries put 2024 primary production at an estimated 670,000 metric tons, under 1% of the 72 million tons produced worldwide. Only four smelters were still operating, and net imports covered 47% of apparent US consumption, with Canada supplying 56% of import volume. A brand claiming domestically sourced aluminum is making a harder-to-verify claim than steel.
Engines and Powertrains
For gas-powered motorcycles, the engine is the single biggest manufactured component in the machine. Harley-Davidson builds its V-twin engines at the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin facility, and Indian Motorcycle produces its engines in Osceola, Wisconsin. Both are genuine domestic manufacturing operations. Arch Motorcycle sources its engine from S&S Cycle in Viola, Wisconsin, also US-built. Boss Hoss uses Chevrolet V8 crate engines manufactured by GM in the United States. Janus imports its engines from China and says so directly.
For electric motorcycles, the battery pack is the powertrain equivalent, and that’s where domestic sourcing breaks down. LiveWire’s battery packs come from Samsung SDI, whose cells are manufactured in South Korea. Zero Motorcycles and Curtiss Motorcycles have not publicly disclosed specific cell suppliers, but lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing is concentrated in China, South Korea, and Japan, and no domestic cell supply chain exists at the motorcycle scale.
Rubber
Motorcycle tires are built almost entirely from imported natural rubber. The United States imports 100% of its natural rubber, and 92% of global production is concentrated in Southeast Asia, according to the USDA’s guayule research program. That program exists because researchers are trying to build a domestic alternative from guayule, a desert shrub, and Goodyear and Bridgestone are running similar long-term development work, but commercial-scale production is years away. A motorcycle assembled in the USA almost certainly rolls on foreign rubber.
Electronics
Modern motorcycles run on semiconductor-dependent systems: ABS, ride-by-wire throttle, fuel injection, traction control, and digital instrumentation. The chips powering those systems come overwhelmingly from Taiwan, where TSMC alone captured nearly 70% of global foundry revenue in 2025, per TrendForce data, with South Korea’s Samsung a distant second. No realistic domestic alternative exists for most of these components. Every carmaker faces the same constraint, so this is not a knock on motorcycle brands specifically. It does mean “assembled in the USA” says nothing about where the electronics inside were made.
Labeling
When you’re researching a motorcycle purchase, you’ll run into several terms that sound similar but mean different things.
- “Made in the USA” – The FTC standard. All or virtually all of the product, from raw materials through final assembly, must be domestically produced and sourced. Almost no motorcycle in current production meets this in full.
- “Assembled in the USA” – Final assembly occurred domestically. Components, engines, and raw materials may be sourced globally. This describes most of the brands on our list.
- “Made in America” – Under USMCA trade rules, this can legally include Canada and Mexico. It is not equivalent to “made in the USA.”
- “Designed in the USA” – The product was designed here. Manufacturing almost certainly happened elsewhere.
- American flag imagery – No regulatory meaning. Any brand can put a flag on its product. Don’t use this as evidence of domestic manufacturing.
- Title 19 Chapter 4 Section 1304 – Federal law requires that imported goods display country-of-origin labeling. Domestic products have no equivalent disclosure requirement, so the absence of origin information is often itself a signal.
Final Tips
A few things to check when you’re researching a specific motorcycle on your own:
- Look up the specific model, not just the brand. Harley-Davidson is the clearest example on this list: the brand assembles in Pennsylvania, but its Revolution Max model lines moved to Thailand for 2025 before the announced return to US production. The engine platform tells you which is which. Zero Motorcycles has a similar split between US-assembled and Philippines-assembled units, depending on the target market.
- Check the model year. A 2024 Pan America was assembled in York, Pennsylvania. A 2025 or 2026 example was built in Thailand. Once Harley’s US production of those models restarts, the model year will again be the fastest way to tell them apart.
- Check the brand’s website directly. Brands with US assembly operations almost always advertise it prominently. If you can’t find any mention of where the motorcycle is built after a reasonable look at the About page, product pages, and FAQ, that’s usually a signal it’s not domestic.
- Ask the dealer, or go straight to the manufacturer. “Where is this model assembled?” and “Where are the engine and primary components manufactured?” are both fair questions. A dealer who can answer cleanly is a good sign, and a brand’s customer service line should be able to answer for any specific VIN.
- Check third-party retailer listings. Amazon and similar retailers are often required to disclose country of origin in product listings even when the brand’s own site omits it. Less applicable for high-ticket motorcycles than for accessories, but useful for gear and parts.
Motorcycle Brands Not Assembled in the USA
A few of the most recognizable motorcycle brands sold in the US market and where they’re actually built.
- Royal Enfield – manufactured at facilities in Oragadam and Vallam Vadagal, near Chennai, India
- Honda – primary production for US-market models in Ayutthaya, Thailand; premium models including the Gold Wing and Africa Twin assembled in Kumamoto, Japan
- Yamaha – high-end models including the R1 assembled in Japan; most US-market volume produced in Thailand and Indonesia
- Kawasaki – high-performance models assembled at the Akashi Works in Akashi, Japan; mid-range and entry-level models manufactured in Thailand
- Suzuki – manufactured in Hamamatsu, Japan
- BMW Motorrad – manufactured at the Berlin-Spandau plant in Berlin, Germany
- Ducati – manufactured at the Borgo Panigale facility in Bologna, Italy
- Triumph – roughly 80% of production at factories in Chonburi, Thailand; Hinckley, UK facility retained for factory customs and prototype builds only
