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.

BMW Motorrad Sets All-Time Sales Record in 2012 – Motorcycle Sales Up 2% Worldwide

01/09/2013 @ 3:00 pm, by Jensen Beeler1 COMMENT

Selling 106,358 motorcycles and maxi-scooters worldwide in 2012, BMW Motorrad had its best 365 days of sales ever last year. A 2% gain over 2011 (104,286 units), the record was punctuated by December’s sales figures, which were up 42.4% over last year, with 6,069 units sold.

Breaking things down, BMW Motorrad’s home market of Germany continues to be the #1 region for the motorcycle brand, with roughly 1 in 5 bikes produced being sold to zie Germans (20,516 units). The United States was the second-largest market with 12,100 units, followed by France (10,950), Italy (10,200), and Brazil (7,7442). Of note, Italy used to be BMW’s second-largest market, but the economic troubles of the Mediterranean states continues to send motorcycle sales in a tailspin.

Brazil is the real mover-and-shaker for BMW Motorrad, and BMW Motorrad now produces four models locally in the South American country, thus avoiding costly tariffs on the machines. Other points of interest include BMW being the top brand for bikes over 500cc in Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Breaking sales down by model, the air-cooled BMW R1200GS remained the German company’s best selling motorcycle worldwide, with 17,249 units sold. The BMW F800GS was the second-best selling model (11,487 units), followed by the BMW R1200GS Adventure (10,203 units), BMW S1000RR (8,970 units), and BMW R1200RT (7,909 units). The BMW K1600GT & BMW K1600GTL sold for a combined 10,033 units sold in 2012.

“Never before in the history of BMW Motorrad have we been able to sell as many vehicles,” said Stephan Schaller, President of BMW Motorrad. “We have achieved this magnificent retail success in the context of a very difficult motorcycle market, especially in Europe.”

“We are on the right track with our product and sales strategy and we will power ahead at full pace to enable ongoing growth,” Schaller continued. “In December we started supplying to customers what is currently the most innovative vehicle in the 1000 cc supersports segment: the new HP4. The three special boxer models “90 years of BMW Motorrad” will arrive at dealerships in January. In February we will start supplying the new mid-range touring bike F800GT. And March 2013 sees the launch of the successor to our bestseller. The all new R 1200 GS – containing our entire experience drawn from over 30 years of GS development.”

“We also anticipate powerful growth stimuli from our maxi scooters. Since the market launch in the second half of 2012 we have been able to sell almost 5,300 vehicles and we now look forward to the first whole sales year. There are lots of new products in store for our customers in 2013 – the year of our 90th anniversary. Based on our ongoing product offensive we feel confident as we look ahead to the upcoming season. Our aim is to surpass the 2012 record once again.”

Source: BMW Motorrad

Tagged under: 2012, BMW, BMW Motorrad, business, sales, worldwide, yearly sales

Comment:

Damo says:
January 10, 2013 at 5:44 AM
The thing that has impressed me most about BMW, has been their motorcycle pricing. BMW as a whole has some of the most inflated automobile pricing on the market, yet their bikes are extremely competitively priced against their Japanese counterparts.

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