Where motorcycling is a woman thing

The gusty winds at Las Vegas Speedway carried the twin aphrodisiacs of fast women -- exhaust and accelerating gears. The occasion: Femmoto.

As its name implies, Femmoto is an event for women motorcyclists. Some might say it is the event for women motorcyclists, since Femmoto is quickly becoming the one-stop shop not only for women to see something that isn’t at all common on the road -- other female motorcyclists -- but to test-ride all kinds of new bikes.

Now in its sixth year, Femmoto boasts an attendance of 500 and has support from nine major manufacturers, four of which were new for 2007: Harley-Davidson, Suzuki, Honda and Hyosung. In 2002, when Ohio rider Bonnie Strawser first founded the event at the Virginia International Raceway, there were just 53 attendees and a single sponsoring manufacturer -- Aprilia. It was predominantly a sport bike event for experienced female riders, but the mix has broadened significantly to include other types of riding and experience levels.

This year, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation joined with a run of its Basic RiderCourse, and Kawasaki, for the second year, ran a dirt bike school. Ducati was offering espressos, in addition to track rides on its sport bikes. Harley-Davidson led sessions on picking up 500-pound motorcycles, as well as 11-mile street rides on its cruisers. And Honda was asking women to weigh in on its 125 cc beginner sportbike, the CBR125R -- thinking those same women may eventually be in the position to recommend the bike to friends who are just getting involved with the sport.

For reasons that are entirely numerical, women, it seems, are becoming a major new focus for manufacturers. We may account for just 10% of motorcyclists in the country, but that means there are almost 1 million of us riding around -- a number that’s simply too large to ignore.

“The real numbers are coming up,” said Honda’s motorcycle press manager, John Row. “Most of us in the industry -- males -- know females who say, ‘Oh. I’ve always wanted to ride’ . . . so there are lots of good reasons” to encourage ridership.

Couple those numbers with motorcycling’s softening sales, and women customers look better and better.

“The outreach market for women is better than it’s ever been. Women are making more money. They’re reaching out to more hobbies than they ever have before and, coinciding with that, we want them to experience our product and understand that riding a Harley-Davidson is usually just as easy as riding any other motorcycle,” said Harley-Davidson product communications manager Jen Gruber, just before an onslaught of leather-clad women poured into the Harley tent for a bike-lifting demo.

Next door, a Harley 18-wheeler was blaring George Thorogood, and other classic rock standards but that was the only music at the event, which was, overall, low key and less girly than I expected for a gathering with so many women. Wandering around, the pink Femmoto flags decorating the track area were about as fem as it got until I happened upon biker Elizabeth Smart, 33, and her hot-pink Kawasaki ZX-10R.

Smart, who owns a dealership with her husband, had trailered her bike from Texas with a group of women from her Speed Angels motorcycle club. On Friday, she took the dirt bike class, and on Saturday she planned to get some track time. By Sunday, she and her friends were going to hit the road -- logging what has to be a painful 1,300 miles in three days on their sport bikes on their way back to Laredo.

Smart, dressed in a pink corseted sport riding jacket customized with rhinestone angel wings, spoke for most of the women at Femmoto when she expressed her reason for riding: “I’m addicted to adrenaline.”

susan.carpenter@latimes.com