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Benelli Due Release Clarified – End of 2012 & Worldwide

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After the news that the Benelli Due 756 would finally be produced and released came out last week, the Italian brand has released a clarification in response to the news that hit the interwebs. Confirming that the Due would indeed become a production model (after making the rounds at motorcycle shows for the better part of the last five years), the Chinese owned Benelli Q.J. released a statement saying that the release date would not be the end of 2011 as some sites had reported, but instead at the end of 2012 (seemingly making this a 2013 model year motorcycle).

Benelli has not outright denied that the news that the Due will hit the Chinese market before it makes its way to Europe, though the Chinese company was quick to say in its statement that “the current version of the Due will be produced in Italy and exported to China and the emerging global markets (without neglecting the European market).” Cryptically we gather that means that the Due we’ve seen will be a world model, while an updated version is slated to hit the European market at some point in the future (2018 perhaps?).

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Bikes

Lazareth Wazuma V8F – The World’s Most Expensive Quad

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We’ve covered the Lazareth Wazuma before, in its E85 drinking BMW V12 semi-bio-friendly form. Of course when you’ve already built a 500hp supercharged slede that makes mothers lock up their daughters, there isn’t much stopping you from pushing the limits even further, as is the case with Lazareth’s latest iteration of the Wazuma platform. Now powered by a Ferrari V8 motor, the Lazareth Wazuma V8F boasts other fun items like its BMW M3 gearbox, with push-to-shift controls embedded into the four-wheeler’s handlebars.

Despite its four wheels, the Lazareth Wazuma V8F is more like a trike than a quad, and has been made so the rear-wheels are close together like road-going trike, and make one virtual über-wheel-of-death that has a contact patch larger than the hole Richard Nixon left in the American psyche after he stepped down from office. Catering to the “I’m not a crook” crowd, Lazareth has posted this monster of a machine on JamesList, the Craigslist of the 1%, and is asking for a mere €200,000 in exchange for ownership of the French-made machine.

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Banter

Carlos Checa’s Ducati Corse Winter Test

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Last year, Nicky Hayden helped Ducati spread some Christmas cheer, as the American MotoGP rider snuck into the Borgo Panigale office and made some “vrrroommm!” noises on a Ducati Diavel that was on display. For the 2011 Christmas season, Ducati has enlisted a more recent champion to help with its holiday wishes: a certain reigning-World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa.

Playing Santa Claus (note the twinkle in his eye) on his Ducati Multistrada 1200, Checa’s list of the “good Ducatistas” in Bologna certainly seems a bit short when judged from this video, but then again it’s not like the MTS1200 has the unlimited payload like Santa’s sled, but we digress. Merry Christmas, Ducati style.

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News

Horex VR6 Gets 161hp & Dry Graphite Chain Lubrication

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Zie Germans are still hard at work this winter back in zie mother country, as the final production version of the Horex VR6 is coming together. Today, the German company has announced the official performance figures of its new street bike, and the base 1,218cc six-cylinder VR motor comes with 161hp on tap and 100 lbs•ft of peak torque.

Making its peak power at 9,000 rpm, the Horex VR6 also makes most of its torque extremely low in the rev range. With 66 lbs•ft of torque at 2,000 rpm, the German roadster reaches 74 lbs•ft of torque at 3,500rpm, which fits well with the company’s hope of making the VR6 easy to ride on city streets.

Perhaps more interesting that the performance figures is the announced constant solid-graphite chain lubrication system. As the name implies, the Horex VR6 will constantly lube its chain, but instead of using oil or wax, as is traditionally used, the German motorcycle company has partnered with specialists at the Schunk Group, who have created a system that constantly coats the chain drive with a thin layer of graphite.

Less messy, and not prone to being flicked off the chain by centrifugal forces, the dry chain lubrication system is an industry first brought to market by Horex, and sounds intriguing on paper. With claims that it increases maintenance intervals over standard chain lubrication systems, this is a feature owners will be particularly interested in seeing reviews of as the VR6 hits dealer floors.

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Racing

Watch Jonathan Rea’s Record WSBK Superpole at Portimao from a Mechanic’s Point of View

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Taking the pole position at the final World Superbike round at Portimao, Jonathan Rea not only put his Castrol Honda on the front of the grid, but also broke set the fastest lap ever for a motorcycle at the Portuguese track. Fortuitously, the factory Honda WSBK team fitted one of its mechanics with a GoPro camera to capture the Superpole from the team’s point-of-view. At 6’10” tall (2.1 meters), the view provided by Daniel Postmus is not only one that few get to witness in side the team garage, but also comes from an altitude slightly higher than many are accustomed.

Lagging all season, the Castrol Honda team found some momentum in the latter races of the season, more specifically when the team was allowed to outfit its WSBK-spec Honda CBR1000RR with ride-by-wire throttle control. Hopefully the team can keep that momentum going forward, as it will have to contend with another season on an only mildly updated racing platform, the 2012 Honda CBR1000RR. Video after the jump.

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Racing

Joe Kopp & The Fastest Triumph at Pikes Peak

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As 2011 winds down, I’ve been going through some of my folders of old material that I wanted to publish earlier this year, but for some reason or another the article didn’t grace the front page of Asphalt & Rubber. One such story was the fastest Triumph ever to run at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), which in 2011 was a Triumph Speed Triple raced by professional flat track star Joe Kopp.

If I were to say politics were at play with Kopp campaigning the Team Latus Triumph Speed Triple in the exhibition class of the PPIHC (along with Chip Yate’s electric superbike), then surely the metaphor would extend to the redrawing of the district lines at Pikes Peak, and may or may not have had something to do with the Ducati-dominated 1200cc class, where surely the Triumph properly belonged.

Read in between the lines as you will with that explanation of events, but at the end of the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Kopp, on his Triumph, was the overall second-fastest rider up The Mountain, winning the exhibition class in the process. Meanwhile Ducati, the official motorcycle of PPIHC, maintained its 1-3 double podium in the 1200cc class, which was lead by rookie rider, and A&R hetero-life partner Carlin Dunne.

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Racing

Team Alstare Racing an MV Agusta F3 in World Supersport?

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You can’t keep a good race team down, as talk in the World Superbike paddock this week has been swirling around the Alstare Racing team. One of several teams to be on the receiving end of Suzuki’s withdrawal from the major racing series, Alstare found its factory-support from Suzuki draw to a close at the conclusion of the 2011 WSBK Championship season. We use the words “factory support” loosely of course, as Alstare Suzuki had been developing the Suzuki GSX-R1000 almost exclusively in-house, receiving only production OEM parts from Suzuki when needed.

As Suzuki shut its doors to WSBK and MotoGP racing, in the hopes of saving money to buy its stock back from minority shareholder Volkswagen (among other things), the Alstare Team Principal Franics Batta vowed that he would race with the Japanese manufacturer, or not race at all. News then came out that linked Team Alstare to possibly taking over the Kawasaki Factory WSBK team, which would later be handed to World Supersport’s Provec Motocard Kawasaki team. Other rumors linked Batta as interested in campaigning with MV Agusta, though the Belgian team owner could not get a callback from Varese.

Progress has seemingly been made on that front though, as Alstare Racing is reportedly closing in on a deal with the Italian company to campaign an MV Agusta F3 in World Supersport, with the relationship possibly growing to include an MV Agusta F4 RR in a seaon’s time.

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News

Benelli Due 756 Finally Goes Live…in China?

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The Benelli Due concept has been in the works for so long, we’re officially giving it the Duke Nukem Forever status of the motorcycle industry. I first laid my eyes on the two-cylinder street-standard back in 2009, as the then called “2ue” was making its second EICMA appearance (the Due made its first appearance as early as the Cologne show in 2006).

Essentially a Benelli triple with a cylinder lopped off, the Benelli Due displaces 756cc with its inline cylinders, and is an otherwise attractive motorcycle. Given how much of a basketcase the “Tre” motor was, we can only imagine the “character” its two-cylinder counterpart brings to the table, though that is an entirely different issue.

Finally announcing that the Benelli Due will hit dealership floors in 2012, the Chinese-owned Italian company has an interesting twist with its news: the Benelli Due will be released in China first, then Europe and other markets.

At play surely is the idea and principle of pride that Chinese companies should release models in their home country first, before servicing other markets. This notion is surely understandable, but does strike us as interesting considering that Europe and North America are likely to be bigger volume markets for this big-displacement motorcycle.

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Bikes

O2 Pursuit – An Air-Powered Dirt Bike

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It doesn’t really matter whether electric motorcycles are the next thing in two-wheeled transportation/recreation, because the door has been opened for an honest debate about the permanence of internal combustion engines (ICE) in our future motorcycles. One of the bi-products of this rare “think outside the box” moments in motorcycling is the idea that compressed air could be a viable energy source to replace gasoline. I have to admit as PADI certified diver, the idea has always seemed extremely far-fetched to me whenever I’ve heard it brought up.

I have played with small-scale compressed-air cars before, and even at a larger scale there would appear to be issues of energy density, efficiency, storage safety, and of course refueling that crop up as potential deal-breakers. That being said, the concept still has some legs as there are ways to work around these many of these constraints. It’s that potential that surely was propelling (oh, god) Dean Benstead, a design student at Australia’s venerable RMIT.

Given a DiPietro air engine by the folks at Engineair, Benstead was tasked with making a viable two-wheeler that would be use a standard scuba tank as an energy storage device. Getting some help from Yamaha Australia, who donated a Yamaha WR250R to the cause, the 02 Pursuit concept is very compelling with its 140 km/h top speed, though knowing the math involved, we’re not sure if it will replace your petrol bike anytime soon.

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Products

Gresini Racing Publishes ‘Ciao Sic’ in Time for Xmas

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It’s been nearly two months since the passing of Marco Simoncelli, and the loss of the popular Italian motorcycle racer is still ever-present in the minds of MotoGP fans. Nothing proves this point better than a moment at our premiere of Fastest in San Francisco last week, where a collective “Marco!” could be heard as SuperSic’s face filled the big screen of the theater. The holidays surely must be tough for Marco’s family, so perhaps it is appropriate that Ciao Sic, an official coffee table tribute book to Marco Simoncelli, has been released in time for the holidays.

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News

November BMW Sales Up 3.9% – Husqvarna Down 28.4%

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BMW Motorrad’s November sales numbers are in, and they show that the German company is still chugging away at a very strong sales year in 2011. Already surpassing the company’s figures from 2010 by 6.1% (which was no slouch of a year for BMW, we might add), BMW has 100,054 units already under its belt for this year. Moving 6,112 units in November, BMW’s sales are up 3.9% over those from November 2010, which continues the German brand’s strong growth in 2011.

BMW Motorrad, along with most of the European motorcycle brands, have enjoyed relatively positive figures throughout 2011 and in the previous recession. One of the more glaring exceptions to that statement however is Husqvarna. Selling 1,181 units last month, Husqvarna is down 28.4% when compared to November 2010. And for the year as a whole, Husky is down 22.5% compared to 2010, selling only 7,956 units YTD.

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