Which costs less to operate, cars or motorcycles?

[burkbuilds]

On a different thread alanmcorcoran mentioned that we were a little off topic and this might be interesting to compare, so what's your take? Is it more expensive to operate your motorcycle or your car?

Consider things like: Fuel, Insurance, Oil changes, Tires, tune ups, general maintenance items and whatever else needs to be included and tell us what you think.

My bike definitely wins in the Fuel, Insurance and cost of oil changes. Loses in the tire category, at least as far as replacement goes, but then again you never seem to have to re-balance my bike tires, no front end alignments, and they don't get rotated every 5,000 miles either. Lately new cars only need a tune up every 100,000 miles so the bike definitely loses there, since you have to change the plugs fairly often and adjust the valves pretty regularly on my bike. You also have to replace things like chains and sprockets on a bike probably on average at least every 20K miles and I never do anything to the drive shaft of my trucks other than grease them for the first 100K.

Finally I give my bike a big lead in up front cost, I mean what kind of new cars are available for $5 grand? We bought my wife one of those Saturn Cube's last year and by the time it was all said and done it cost about $20K.

Somebody else chime in now!