This paper examines Euler characteristics and characteristic classes in the motivic setting. We establish a motivic version of the Becker-Gottlieb transfer, generalizing a construction of Hoyois. Making calculations of the Euler characteristic of the scheme of maximal tori in a reductive group, we prove a generalized splitting principle for the reduction from GLn or SLn to the normalizer of a maximal torus (in characteristic zero). Ananyevskiy's splitting principle reduces questions about characteristic classes of vector bundles in SL-oriented, η-invertible theories to the case of rank two bundles. We refine the torus-normalizer splitting principle for SL 2 to help compute the characteristic classes in Witt cohomology of symmetric powers of a rank two bundle, and then generalize this to develop a general calculus of characteristic classes with values in Witt cohomology.2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 14F42, 55N20, 55N35.