Mission Motors tweeted out something interesting just a moment ago, a link to a new website for Mission Motorcycles. Teasing there a photo of the Mission R, it would seem that the electric superbike that does competitive AMA Supersport lap times at Laguna Seca, is finally set to come to production. It seems we won’t know everything about the new Mission Motorcycles project until June 3rd, though we can speculate pretty accurately on what the A&R Bothan spy network has been telling us. Expect to see the Mission R electric superbike in street legal trim, honed even further than when we rode the machine back in August last year.
Stefan Pierer’s acquisition of Husqvarna continues to baffle me. You will note I say Pierer, and not KTM, bought Husqvarna, since the Austrian CEO used Pierer Industrie AG in the transaction as a means to help side-step European antitrust issues. After all, we can’t have Europe’s largest dirt bike manufacturer, nay largest total motorcycle manufacturer, gobbling up even more brands in the two-wheeled world. But, I digress. Developing three road bikes (Husqvarna Nuda 900, Husqvarna Strada 650, & Husqvarna Terra 650), with three more concepts waiting in the wings (Husqvarna Moab, Husqvarna Baja, & Husqvarna E-G0), it is with even more confusion that we learn that Pierer & Co. intend to kill the Husqvarna Nuda project and its other street siblings.
In case you missed the story last week, Kevin Schwantz is preparing to race in this year’s Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race. For the race, Schwantz will be riding on a team formed by Yukio Kagayama, who in addition to having raced in the MotoGP, World Superbike, and British Superbike Championships, is also a previous Suzuka 8-Hour winner with the Suzuki Endurance Race Team (also joining the three-rider team Noriyuki “Nitro” Haga). Releasing a Q&A about his team’s Suzuka 8-Hour entry, Kagayama-san walks us through how the team came together, what equipment the riders will use, and his outlook on the team’s competitiveness.
A single-cylinder hooligan-maker, the KTM 690 Duke is 330 lbs (curbside without fuel) and 67hp of two-wheeled fun, and we hope that the Austrians bring the KTM 690 Duke R our way as well. While we are on the topic of things missing from KTM’s American line-up, a decent supersport is painfully obvious, yet we can’t see the folks at KTM following the paths of other brands. That’s where our friend Luca Bar comes to mind with his latest concept: the KTM RC4. Using the KTM 690 Duke platform and its LC4 engine, Bar has designed a super-single full-fairing sport bike that takes the Austrian company’s “Ready to Race” DNA and applies it to an idea that is not all that disimilar to the Ducati Supermono.
When I sat down with Claudio Domenicali at the Ducati 1199 Panigale R launch, the now-CEO of Ducati Motor Holding was still just the General Manager of the Italian motorcycle company. Four weeks after our interview though, Gabriele del Torchio would leave Ducati for Alitalia; and Domenicali, a 21-year veteran of both the racing and production departments of Ducati, would take his place at the top of Italy’s most prestigious motorcycle brand. After reading our interview from Austin, Texas after the jump, I think you will agree too.
That Yamaha is working on a seamless gearbox is no secret, with Yamaha’s test riders currently racking up the kilometers around tracks in Japan. Recently, however, Spanish magazine SoloMoto published an article suggesting that Yamaha has already been using its new seamless gearbox since the beginning of the season. My own enquiries to check whether Yamaha was using a seamless gearbox or not always received the same answer: no, Yamaha is not using the seamless gearbox. To test this denial, I went out to the side of the track on Friday morning at Jerez to record the bikes as they went by.
After a very public father/son break-up between Paul Teutul Sr. and Paul Teutul Jr., a steroid-ring scandal involving Paul Sr., and finally a bankruptcy proceeding, it appears that Orange County Choppers is the impossible to kill multi-headed hydra of doom that we all knew it was, as the custom chopper shop is once again headed to the small screen and recruiting some talent, on and off the show. Looking for “someone who will work alongside Paul Senior, running the shop and helping build some of the best custom motorcycles in the world,” OCC says it will be back on television with a new show later this month. Please for the love of god, will someone give this man the attention he craves so dearly??! Or, just shoot us in the face.
We love us some concept bikes here at Asphalt & Rubber, and we have featured more than a few pieces of stunning design and imagination on our pages. Though, we can’t remember the last time one of these works of art were brought to us by a legitimate racing team, but that is what we have here with the Team Alstare Superbike Concept. A nod to the former Suzuki team’s return to the World Superbike Championship as the Ducati factory squad with Carlos Checa and Ayrton Badovini, Alstare has enlisted the help of designer Serge Rusak of Rusak Kreaktive Designworks to ink the shape of its futuristic Superbike concept, while Tryptik Studios handled the 3D modeling prowess.
If you didn’t watch Thursday’s pre-event press conference for MotoGP at Jerez, it is worth a viewing right to the end (assuming you have a MotoGP.com account). Building off the news about the NBA’s Jason Collins coming out as gay in a self-written feature in Sport Illustrated, my good colleague David Emmett had the courage to inquire about the culture and acceptance of the MotoGP paddock for homosexual riders. For the sake of accuracy, after the jump is a full transcript of David’s question, as put to riders Cal Crutchlow, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez, Andrea Dovizioso, Stefan Bradl, and Scott Redding, as well as those riders’ responses to David’s inquiry.
News that Suzuki plans on returning to the MotoGP Championship in 2014 should be old information for dedicated Asphalt & Rubber readers, and the Japanese company’s inline-four race bike was already spotted doing test laps last year by the eager eyes at Cycle World. Well the American print-mag has another set of eyebrow-raising high-quality photos of the 2014 Suzuki GSV-R to mull over from the Motegi race track, along with some technical insights provided by the venerable Kevin Cameron.
Wow, this bike could be a revelation. If this is the real article, and it is as small and lightweight as it looks, and handles like a litrebike instead of a big tourer……. Well, I’m imaging this being to a ZX-10 what a ZX-10 is to a ZX-6. Not giving up much on handing and weight for the big-bore power. My interest is piqued!
Hopefully I’m not totally highjacking the thread, but I’m sure a limitation to handling (lean-angle) with big bore bikes would be how wide the motor is across the frame. That got me thinking how Triumph has a special opportunity in the big-big-bore market if they ever wanted to compete there. A 1300 or 1400cc triple only as wide or heavy as a litrebike anyone? With racy geometry? …Guess I should be hoping for an 1100cc daytona first (wouldn’t WSBK’s set-up of 100cc I4 and 1200cc v2 mean an 1100cc I3?). I know I’d rather have a torque monster liter bike than the current offering of top end only power. That is the whole reason this new ZX tease is appealing to me…
According to teaser shots posted on the big ZX1400 forum (now pulled off at the request of Kawi) during US drag testing, the bootup screen on the new bike’s dash still shows the old 6 headlight design. I really hope the above spy shots are correct but it’s not looking likely.
Check this teaser!
look great from the front if its real… current gen is ugly as hell.
i can see 200-210ps at the bottom of the pic.
Waiting with LOTS OF SALT…U know…in case we get something new BUT as significant or under the level of BNGs.
Wondering if they have another new(refreshed) watercrafts too like Yamaha did like a month ago…Lots of Salt on that one too…as i believe that gun still smoking.
Someones got news on this…and also does sound a bit pissed of.
http://hellforleathermagazine.com/2011/09/why-these-shots-of-the-2012-zx-14-are-total-bullshit/
Lolz, Hellforleather decided to hate hard on you guys because this is probably fake. but at the end of the day: who the fuck cares, this is a free article to read, something those capitalistic, self-obsessed (no i dont give a fuck about the author acquiring a new concubine to spread his herpes to) pricks wont ever understand. And sure, if this was fake(it probably is, but you guys kinda thought that as well), it still doesnt out-weigh the hundreds of well-informed articles you do publish that are well worth my time (seldom to be said about hell for leather) added to the fact that the article’s title clearly states the uncertainty as to whether this is genuine, good journalism Asphalt, and thank you for being free!
oh, Young Machine…
in japan, nobody believes this magazine. lol
Ok, so HFL and A&R have both been tricked now. Does this mean the war of words moves onto something else, or will people just drop the petty crap?
Oh, and BobD, pretty much every blog is run by capitalists, they all want to make some money off of it, they just do it in different ways (Subscription vs. ad revenue). I prefer the ad revenue approach, as do most people. Apparently it’s working for HFL though, so good for them.
The problem isn’t so much that HFL is or isn’t money oriented so much as their articles, for the most part, wouldn’t be worth reading if they were free.
With so many good websites that report news gratis, why would I pay for the haga they spin over there?
Although I wish I could log onto HFL to give him the old, “You mad bro?”
Let’s turn the conversation away from the differences between “this is” and “is this” when framing articles, and instead focus on a far more interesting topic that comes from this nonsense.
The great thing about the internet is that it creates an environment for a multitude of opinions and points-of-view, as the online medium itself, from a technical perspective, allows for instantaneous dialogue to surround a story/article.
I actually really enjoy reading stories/comments from others that touch on a topic that I’ve also covered, especially when what’s written serves as a counterpoint to the issues. This comes back to the dialectal process that the internet creates, and from a journalistic perspective it makes for a more robust, accurate, and truthful stream of information for readers to digest.
Unfortunately, the idea that there can only be one correct point-of-view or opinion is a pervasive belief in certain circles. When you try and curtail the conversation either directly (limiting who can comment and respond to what you’ve written), or indirectly (accosting any competing thought from others), you create an ecosystem prone to group-think behaviors. While that’s great for stroking egos, it brings little else to the table in my opinion.
I don’t know why some want to frame things in “us” vs. “them” manner. There’s no scorecard here, at least I don’t keep one. The ethos of A&R has always been to take a deep-dive on the motorcycle industry, and to have a daily news element to help frame the topics of discussion.
A well-reasonsed argument has been put forward that what Young Machine published, and what we covered, is in fact not the new ZX-14. While the more base conversation might revolve about who was right or wrong, I think the better point of conversation to have is about how great it is that such a reaction could occur over this story in such a short timespan.
Now we just have to work on some elements of decorum in the process.
Damn you Jensen, now I feel guilty.
That was like one of those, “I am not so much angry, as I am disappointed” dad speeches I got as kid after hucking myself down a set of stairs on a skateboard for the sixth time.
That being said one of the reasons I keep coming back to A&R is the oddly high level of civil debate that takes place here (for the most part). A rarity these days.
Back on topic, I hope the pictures are in fact accurate, as relatively nimble 1400cc hyperbike would be right up my alley. I love the Hayabusa and ZX-14, but the handling just isn’t there for me.
ZX-14R is a special edition bike running fast in the streets and perform various perfect maneuvers in the streets.