Top five sites to find motorbikes for sale

Motorcycles are becoming hugely popular in the UK. More and more of us are recognising their benefits and switching to two wheels. Once you've passed your test and bought your safety gear, where are the best places to find a new or used motorbike? Here is the short guide to the top five UK motorcycle sales sites on the web.

The motoring sites

It used to be the case that, if you were looking to buy a moped, scooter, new or used motor cycle, then you would turn to Bike Trader's weekly publication. Nowadays, there is no need to visit your newsagent as this forms part of the Autotrader website. This site offers a huge number of two-wheelers at your fingertips. At the time of writing (10.07.11), there were over 1600 new and used scooters for sale and over 20,000 bikes. In addition, they have adverts from companies offering bike loans, finance, insurance and traders looking to buy or sell motorcycles. There is also a very useful Bike Directory that helps you to find the nearest bike training centre or trader using a post code search. eBay is another "destination site" for all types of products, including motorbikes. The UK site gives you the option to search by maker, size, type, year and more besides, so that you can quickly narrow down your choices. There are no additional services, however, unlike the specialist sites.

The specialists

Motorcycle News (MCN) has been a well-respected publication for some considerable time. Their website carries on this professionalism with a mass of information to make your choice and purchase of a bike easy. Their review section covers just about every make and model with comparisons and star ratings. Also, reviewed are products, like helmets and clothing to help you stay safe. The classifieds are equally expansive with over 17,000 ads on the day this was written. If classic bikes are your thing, then you need to head to Vintagebike.co.uk.
This site is a veritable gold mine of useful classic bike information and always has a large number of motor cycles for sale. From Rudge to Norton, FN to classic Ducati, you'll find them on here. With a fantastic forum activity and a great spares section, you'll be hard-pushed to find a better classic site. Lastly, we come to MotorcycleSupermarket.com. This site is similar in design and choice to the Biketrader, but the fact that they offer free classifieds is likely to draw sellers on a budget, who may not advertise elsewhere. If you can't find which bike you want on these sites, then you may struggle to find it anywhere.