Ducati Q1 2013 Sales Drop 5% – Audi Dishes the Details

Ducatisti: do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad news is that the market for motorcycles 500cc and up is down 17% worldwide for the first quarter of this year, which means the “good” news is that Ducati is only down 5% for Q1 2013. Not exactly the start out of the gate that Audi was hoping for its newly acquired two-wheeled brand, but what are you going to do? Western Europe is a mess, with Spain and Italy continuing to go down like a…well, you know. While we don’t enjoy the misery of motorcycle brands, the fact that Ducati Motor Holding is now under the Audi AG umbrella means that we get far more detailed quarterly and yearly reports from the two-wheeled marque, and we’ve got the digits after the jump.

Mission Motorcycles: The Mission R Lives??!

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.

Goodbye Husqvarna Nuda, We Hardly Knew Thee

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.

Q&A: Yukio Kagayama Talks About the Upcoming Suzuka 8-Hour with Kevin Schwantz & Noriyuki Haga

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.

KTM RC4 Concept by Luca Bar Design

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.

Q&A: Claudio Domenicali Talks Frameless Chassis, Sacred Cows, & The Future for Ducati

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.

Is Yamaha Using A Seamless Gearbox? The Data Says No

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.

OCC Coming Back to TV? — Universe Collapses in on Self

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.

Alstare Superbike Concept by Team Alstare

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.

Transcript: The Gay Question at Jerez

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.

MV Agusta F3: The €9,000 Motorcycle that Castiglioni Hopes Will Save the Company

08/10/2010 @ 5:30 pm, by Jensen Beeler8 COMMENTS

UPDATE: The MV Agusta F3 has officially broken cover.

Italian news site Il Sole 24 Ore sat down with the new owner of MV Agutsa, Claudio Castiglioni, and asked the Italian perhaps the most pertinent question about his new company: what’s next? Striking to the point of things, Castiglioni says much of MV Agusta’s future will depend on the company’s new three-cylinder motorcycles, which the company hopes to sell 10,000 of during the next model year.

Officially now called the MV Agusta F3, Castiglioni was also forthright on some of the details. Already rumored to be a 675cc three-cylinder powered motorcycle, Castiglioni has confirmed this setup along with the fact that there will be at least two price points, with a base and sport model being available.

Pricing for the MV Agusta F3 will start at €9,000 with the sportier F3 costing between €10,000-€11,000. Some gorilla math on the A&R international pricing calculator computes those numbers to be just over $9,000 for the base model, and $10,500-$11,500 for the sport, which makes the new F3 a strong rival for the Triumph Daytona and undercuts the new Ducati 848 EVO considerably.

Like the F4 & Brutale, the F3 will have a naked counterpart as well. Castiglioni calls the smaller naked street bike the “Brutalina” which we sincerely hope is not the name the company lands-on for the bike, but the new CEO was quick to say that the naming of the smaller Brutale has not yet been finalized. No word on pricing yet for the smaller Brutale, but expect it to be somewhere in the $8,500 range.

While these prices are encouraging, the goal of 10,00 units in the first year of its restart is a daunting task for MV Agusta. Castiglioni is surely looking at Ducati’s numbers, which sells similar numbers in the lower-priced Monster segment. Time will tell if this strategy is the winning recipe for MV Agusta, and if the brand can maintain its premium sport bike status while undercutting with the F3 progeny.

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore

Tagged under: 675cc, Brutale, Brutalina, calc, Claudio Castiglioni, F3, MV Agusta, MV Agusta Brutalina, MV Agusta F3, three-cylinder, triple

Comment:

soupy says:
August 10, 2010 at 10:30 PM
If that price is for real and the styling (Tamburini’s supposed last design) is anything I’m hoping it’ll be, I’m putting my Daytona 675 up for sale and putting a deposit ASAP.
Asphalt_Rubber says:
August 11, 2010 at 12:31 AM
MV Agusta F3: The €9,000 Motorcycle that Castiglioni Hopes Will Save the Company – http://aspha.lt/19g #motorcycle
Doug Luberts says:
August 11, 2010 at 7:08 AM
If the quality is up there with the F4 and Brutale, I’d easilly consider adding one to the stable …
Alex B says:
August 11, 2010 at 8:21 AM
I hope this makes financial sense for MV… The cost of putting together a smaller displacement machine isn’t that much lower than the current crop, unless some things are omitted (go-fast parts, hand assembly, in-house built parts, dare we say, quality control…). Would be curious to see how it turns out.
That being said.. I want one!
SPQR says:
August 11, 2010 at 8:42 AM
I want to see what it looks like naked.
Silver says:
August 11, 2010 at 10:00 AM
Let’s just hope that they change up the design of the motorcycle so it doesn’t look like a 10 year old MVF4 just warmed over. They are fantastic looking bikes but why buy a smaller displacement bike when a used F4 can be had for close to the same price. They just need to break the mold of the old F4 (and new one) and come out with something stunning.
Asphalt_Rubber says:
August 11, 2010 at 1:57 PM
Castiglioni Spills the beans on MV Agusta F3 and "Brutalina" – http://aspha.lt/19g #motorcycle #mvagusta
ihb says:
August 28, 2010 at 6:59 AM
And than of a sudden they use pics that A&R questioned months ago!
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/rumors/mv-agusta-f3-3cylinder-head/
buch of looser they are

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