Who Owns Ural Motorcycles And Where Are Its Bikes Made?

Unless you're a die-hard motorcycle enthusiast, your first question might actually be, who the heck is Ural Motorcycles? That's understandable because its market niche boils down to one very specific style. While its headquarters is based in Redmond, Washington (a very small one at that), the bikes are not built in the United States.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, let's put provide some context and give a historical overview of the company whose name includes a vaguely familiar word you know you know, but just can't put your finger on how you know. Give up? Ural Motorcycles is named after the Ural mountain range that runs approximately 1,550 miles across Russia like a strip of burned rubber. 

The mountains stretch from the Ural River in the south up to the Kara Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean) in the far north. This expansive range is rich in minerals and have been home to people for ages. What's more, it's considered the physical boundary separating the continents of Europe and Asia.

The motorcycle company isn't quite as old as the mountains, but it has been around longer than you probably realize. After the Nazis invaded Poland during Operation Barbarossa (a military operation that failed miserably) on September 1, 1939, with an all out tank blitzkrieg, the Soviets needed a multi-faceted vehicle that was capable of traversing the rudimentary roads and countryside devastated by battle.

The Soviet Ministry of Defense clandestinely purchased (through Sweden, no less) a handful of BMW R71 sidecar motorcycles, a forerunner to BMW's R75, one of WW2's most famous motorcycles. They backward-engineered every component of that bike, and in August 1941 — a month before the Nazis invaded – the Soviets put the finishing touches on their own version of the R71, known as the M-72.

Before mass production ramped up, the Soviets decided to move the bike-building plant to keep it out of striking distance of the Luftwaffe. The city of Irbit, located in the far reaches of the Ural Mountains, was chosen as the new location. As it turns out, only one building was big enough to house a factory, so they took over the brewery and turned it into the Irbitsky Motosikletny Zavod (IMZ), or Irbit Motorcycle Factory.

The first bikes rolled out on February 25, 1942, and by the end of the war, the IMZ built 9,799 M-72 motorcycles for Soviet military use. For the decade following the war, the plant expanded and continued building bikes for the military. In 1953, bikes were exported to its allies and other Warsaw Pact states for the first time. At its height, the IMZ had almost 10,000 workers and could build almost 130,000 motorcycles every year. 

Before the 1960s began, a second factory was built in Kyiv, Ukraine (referred to as KMZ) to continue production of military motorcycles. Meanwhile, the original IMZ location shifted to making bikes for Russia's domestic market.

Global recognition came slowly. Ural Motorcycles didn't make it into the United Kingdom until the 1970s, and even then, it was sold under a different name (Cossack Motorcycles). IMZ was owned entirely by Russia, but that changed in 1992 when the government rolled out the privatization voucher program, which issued vouchers to all private citizens that could then be traded for shares in companies previously owned by the state.

Management and employees joined together to buy a 40% stake, while another 38% came through the private voucher program, with Russia maintaining a 22% stake in the company. Some 20 years later (in 1994), an independent distributor in Preston, Washington, began selling Ural bikes in the United States.

By 1998, vehicles from the West had become more enticing to Russian consumers than sidecar motorcycles, and IMZ was selling less than 2,000 bikes a year, yet still maintained a workforce of almost 4,000 people. IMZ was sold to statesman and businessman Kakha Bendukidze, who brought in his people and ideas, including expanding into two-wheeled motorcycles and even a chopper called the Ural Wolf.

Two short years later, dwindling sales and looming debt forced the plant to shut down. Bendukidze subsequently sold the company to a group of investors in December 2000, one of which included Ilya Khait, IMZ's current CEO (and majority shareholder). After a quick but effective streamlining of operations, which included shrinking the number of workers by as much as two-thirds, the plant reopened in the spring of 2001.

In 2002, Irbit Motorworks of America, Inc. (the distribution arm in America) was incorporated in Redmond, Washington, where the corporate headquarters still resides. The following year, the European distribution arm (Ural Motorcycles GmbH) was created in Austria. In 2006, the holding company IMZ-Ural Group, Inc. was formed, under which everything resides.

So, where are the bikes actually built, then? Well, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, its production plant was still located in Irbit. IMZ-Ural immediately condemned the attack. Madina Merzhoeva (VP of marketing and international sales) later said, "People understand that what's happening doesn't represent the brand. Everything we've done over the last 20 years as a brand is aligned with the exact opposite values that are being used [to justify] this conflict."

The following month, production halted because of sanctions placed on Russia by the rest of the world. It could no longer import the parts (nearly 80%) needed to make the bikes or export anything outside Russia. At the time, approximately 1,200 sidecars were produced each year, and as much as 95% of those were exported. The company acted quickly, though, and after moving to Petropavlovsk in the Republic of Kazakhstan, production resumed in August 2022, where it's still taking place today.

According to the company, its primary market is the United States, but it sells bikes around the globe via a network of over 190 dealerships and service centers. IMZ-Ural only makes a few models, but their Gear-Up is one of our 16 best retro-style motorcycles on the market today.