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 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.
GodSpeed Ducati.
Now don’t rest yourself in all your latest glory like some of the other guys and keep pumping new models out ( Where’s the baby Panigale ?, Baby Multi, u name it ).
I only wish their care and attention toward the customers with expanding gas tanks was as good as their care and attention focused on the bottom line!
OH, i’ve heard about this…did it happen to u ? Share some lite on it if it did.
I guess it can’t be that much harder or more $$$ to make the plastic tanks ethanol resistant ? RIGHT ?
Had an issue with mine on the Duc and my RSV4 both companies replaced the tanks at my local dealer … 30 min procedure and off i went… not really a big deal to me…the dealer was great and so were the manufacturer …
sometimes I think that the Ducs for “poor” italian/EU market has made with less quality than overseas exported models or … u.s. market has a faster “model change” (at the first expensive-maintenance limit).
:-(
I help them get there lol ……
I think I have an expanding tank issue too, just recently realised…
I filed a claim with Ducati at my local dealer and I had no problem whatsoever getting a replacement tank for my ’10 Streetfighter S. Ducati and the dealer were great.
“I only wish their care and attention toward the customers with expanding gas tanks was as good as their care and attention focused on the bottom line!” – Audrey
My sentiments exactly. There was a settlement which was finalised in NA, essentially that Ducati would replace the affected tanks WITH THE SAME MATERIAL once a fault was found. These affected 50,000 motorcycles in North America (varying degrees of expanding certainly). The alternate option was to provide shorter seats, bracketry and limit the steering stops if handlebars were hitting the tanks.
Keep in mind, ethanol and its ability to hold water (in turn bloating the polymer of the tank) is to blame. ALSO. . . keep in mind that ethanol has been a fuel component of North American gasolines since the early 1990s.
So. A 43% increase in sales in 2011. . . and Ducati couldn’t be troubled to serve its customers and offer a permanent solution for this issue.
Draw your own conclusion of what Ducati is looking out for.
What? As if the turning radius on Ducatis isn’t wide enough already.
And didn’t Ducati do any research when developing the tanks (what plastic would be affected with fuels in EU, NA, etc)? Seems there’s quite an oversight and didn’t do proper homework. . . .
Ive been fortunate to have not experience the expanding tank issues but have experience my fair share of other issues with my three Ducatis. But I still love the bikes that Ducati makes. If you’re that unhappy with your ducati then get rid of it and don’t buy another.
I have had tanks on two Ducatis (post 2006 models) that have expanded. Both were replaced by the dealer (Ducati Seattle ; fantastic bunch of guys but not sure about them now that a new owner gave the founder the ass out the door). Ducatis’ response is 100% ineffective and only serves to delay the problem until the legal time limit expires after which the owner is left with a tank that will expand and come off its mounts. If you read and follow the forums you will know that the only way to treat this is to coat the inside of the tank with Caswell tank sealant. This “fix” works but nobody knows for how long. I drain both tanks over winter to minimize the fuel exposure. Either way if you have not treated your tank in this manner when it was replaced, it will happen again at some stage. Ducati N.A. were also aware of the problem and continued to supply bikes to the American market with the same tank construction. Ducati N.A. ignored the issue and it wasn’t until owners mounted a class action lawsuit that they really responded. It is a PATHETIC and NEGLIGENT way to treat a loyal customer base and I for one will not be buying another Ducati with a plastic tank. Greed pure and simple and totally not customer focused… damn bastards those bean counters!
I been using seafoam (or your choice of a ethanol fighting agent) and my tank (knock on wood) has been fine. I actually also use the additive in my cars at least once a month. It’s not just to stop the ethanol from misshaping my tank but to help maintain my fuel lines (which are rubber) and help keep my injectors clean. Ethanol is bad news all around.
I’m not sure how accurate this is but changing formulation of the tank post production is not as easy as it sounds. From my understanding, the company is to bound produce the motorcycle as it was presented originally and made legal to the given country.
BMW has had their issues- I have also heard of KTM and Aprilia are suffering from the ethanol. A lot of the models have their tanks covered and reshaped to account for the potential expansion. Ducati seems to have followed suit and have reshaped their tanks.