Dayton - All Models

Company History

The Dayton name in motorcycling traces to the Davis Sewing Machine Company of Dayton, Ohio, which, like many early American industrial firms, diversified into bicycles and then motorcycles during the brass era. Produced in small numbers in the 1910s, Dayton motorcycles reflected the assembler model of the time: proprietary frames and branding paired with engines, magnetos, and carburetors from specialist suppliers. Some Dayton-badged machines found their way to dirt ovals and board tracks, where America’s appetite for speed turned fairgrounds into roaring amphitheaters. The company’s real manufacturing heft remained in bicycles, however, and as the 1920s progressed—with automobiles becoming more attainable and the motorcycle market consolidating around Indian and Harley-Davidson—the Dayton motorcycle chapter drew to a close. Historically, the significance of Dayton lies in its snapshot of American ingenuity at a hinge point in mobility. Factories that once stitched fabric and machined bobbins learned to braze frames and grind valves, while riders experimented with the newfound freedom of internal combustion. Surviving Dayton motorcycles are rare and cherished, less for raw performance than for the story they tell about a city synonymous with invention (the Wright brothers were also of Dayton) and about an industry sorting out what a motorcycle should be. They embody a time when the line between bicycle and motorcycle was still smudged, and when a good machinist could bring a new vehicle into the world with determination, catalogs, and a healthy respect for trial and error.