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.
Anybody that thinks about ‘motorcycle shipments’ in a time like this should get their heads checked.
Seriously.
Oh no! I’m gonna get my CBR late?! This is bullshit!
*meanwhile hundreds to thousands are homeless, several have been killed*
I could give a Sh!t about the honda factory, when one nuclear reactor is not cooling down and they may need to release some radioactive steam. Japan, is well prepared and lots of the big factories shutdown automatically, but this is a huge disaster that if it where anywhere else it would certainly be 100x the damage and loss of life.
My GF tried for hours to get a phone call in, and when she got through they exchanged some words and knew everything was fine, her father rushed her off the phone, so not to clog the phone lines for emergency calls. these people are well prepared.
This is a motorcycle news site. What do you guys expect?
True, motorcycle shipments aren’t important compared to the lives and livelihoods that have been destroyed by this disaster, but this website isn’t a place to report on such aspects of life. This is a site about MOTORCYCLE related news. The earthquake effecting Honda is news worthy for such a site. I don’t see anything in this article that was out of line or suggesting that the REAL tragedy of this event was the delay of motorcycle shipments. If anyone is out of line, its you guys.
Another motorcycle website reported that the Motegi round of MotoGP might be delayed due to this event… does that mean they only care about MotoGP?
Again, the events in Japan are tragic but still, if you want the human side of the story, there are a plenty of places for such news. You came to a motorcycle news site and complain about motorcycle related impact of this earthquake. Kinda silly if you ask me.
With that said, my heart and prayers are with those in Japan. Especially those who perished and those who are dealing with the loss of loved ones.
@ML: I do apologise for the lack of nuance in my comment, I very much appreciate A&R as a source of motorcycle related news and I can see how it may have come across as a an unintentional direct stab at them.
Merely the thought however of anybody complaining about not getting their new CBR in time because of this immensely tragic disaster, is making me sick.
@thingymadoodle – correct.
in a situation like this, everything is about the disaster. when 911 happened, every channel talked about the tragic moment – not “the towers are down the stock market wont open”.
dont get me wrong, i like this site. much better than hellforaa$holes.
this is more inline.
http://motomatters.com/news/2011/03/12/earthquake_threatens_japanese_motogp_rou.html
At the end of the day A&R is what it is, a motorcycle news site. I don’t expect readers to come to this site looking for a CNN level of treatment on Japan’s earthquake disaster. We honestly couldn’t do it justice. I too would be upset over the 18 y/o punk kid who complains that his crotch rocket won’t be available because of the recent events. There’s not much you can do about those kind of people except hope that they grow up a bit more in life.
This sentence was my sort of way of saying that this story is a relatively low priority in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still the pertinent information as it applies to motorcycles:
“While Japan has more serious issues to contend with at the moment, the immediate ramifications for the motorcycle industry appear to be the now expected delays in shipping motorcycles from Japan to other countries.”
David did a great job on his piece (even mentions A&R which is always nice of him). He also didn’t have to travel 19hrs today to Doha. I’m actually in Dubai right now, and will be meeting David in Doha in another hour or two, as we’re sharing a room for the GP.