I don't know the full scoop on American Thunder, but I caught a recent episode (This week? Last week?) and was surprised to see Michelle Smith was gone.
In fact, Charity Hodges is not the host of the show. She is one of three co-hosts. There is a fellow whose name I cannot remember and another piece of eye-candy not nearly as impressive as Charity.
The other interesting change is that American Thunder is no longer solely about American motorcycles. On the episode that I watched, their project bike was a Suzuki cruiser. So, American Thunder is now embracing non-American motorcycles. Maybe they should change the name to International Thunder?
One thing that didn't change? All the parts for the project bike were made by Kuryakyn. I can't say this for sure, but it sure seems like Kuryakyn must be the major sponsor of the show, maybe footing the production costs to push their products.
Given that Kuryakyn has begun producing a wide range of accessories for metric cruisers in the last few years, I'm betting the company threatened to pull their sponsorship if they didn't start including metrics. Michelle Smith might have been pushed out in the deal... or she might have walked because she's a Harley girl.

Who knows?
