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.
Jesse James Closes Down West Coast Choppers – http://bit.ly/b39pOm #motorcycle http://ow.ly/19uhRO
Probably an impulsive emotional decision, my guess is that he’ll be back.
Probably a rational business decision; my guess is America’s chopper fascination is all done.
thankfully.
America’s love of overpriced underperforming poseurmobiles has come to an end. They were bikes for a time of easy credit and low self-esteem. I haven’t done the market research to validate this, but I think that there is a considerable market of Americans who would buy an American made bike that was special (like a Ducati) but not a chopper or cruiser. I sure as hell would and I finally have the disposable income to buy one so long as it were priced around (lower than) a Ducati. West Coast Choppers will not be missed by many.
Tom, America made those bikes. They were called Buells. No one bought them either. Maybe Erik will have better luck now that he is out from under the HD banner.
Too close to call! While you are all correct, it indeed could be a rash decision. Jesse James isn’t exactly Warren Buffett.
Import,
Buells were garbage. under performing, overpriced, and ugly as sin. Then they payed off DMG so they could run almost twice the displacement of it’s competitor’s Japanese made sport bikes to make a name for themselves as a “performance” company. I agree with Tom. the US needs a national brand like Ducati. HD almost had it with their short term ownership of MV Augusta too, but MV is back in the hand of the italians.
@ CP: No matter even if HD still owned MV, MV will always be considered an Italian company and Italian brand.
As much as you hate to admit it, Buell was the closest the US came to having an national performance bike brand (and probably will be for a while).
froryde, you are probably right about Buell being it for a while. However, CP is also correct n the Buell’s were subpar in their engines and design – although I still think that the Buell Blast was the ideal beginner bike that has been made in my adult lifetime. There are a few Buells that I have seen here in Japan and they all have crap seats, but over 20,000K so the Japanese must love them. Buell’s also had a design that most people didn’t grab on to but Buell’s biggest problem was always being sold at HD dealers where the faithful would not touch them and non-HD people simply will not go. I went to some HD dealers near West Palm Beach a few years ago looking for a Blast and you’d thought I had come in as a Muslim terrorist!
Ducatis are beautiful and so are MV Agustas – you are right about MV always being an Italian brand but HD could have taken things it learned there and applied them to Buells……but, HD chose, once again, to be losers. HD has no design aesthetic and they think that every American bike must only have a V-Twin.
There could have been an American sport company if Eller had gotten Indian and if Excelsior-Henderson hadn’t had the rug pulled out from under them. I still think that there is a market of Americans who want to win and would support an American company that cost a little more than the Japanese bikes if the US bike were well engineered and aesthetically beautiful. I think that the Americans could never compete with the Japanese on price but we certainly could compete with the Italians on engineering and design.
jesse closeing down the west coast shop!!!! say it anit so? ive alwas been a big fan of jesse work and alwas will be tell the day i die! when the time came to watch occ or west coast choppers or monster garage i was glued to the tv wacthen jesse and his crazy and sick biker build off.if i’d had a chance to build a bike with jesse i quit work and leave everything behind and go do it! oh well guess that will never happen will it your #1 fan
Don’t know why his shutting his doors “hit you out of the blue”, when he had announced a month or so earlier that he was moving to Texas to be close to his estranged wife and the kid(s) they had together.
Good riddance! I wish nothing but poverty and unhappiness on this racist dbag……..
Jesse James Closes Down West Coast Choppers: This one hits us out of the blue, but according to Cyril Huze, Jesse … http://bit.ly/c97wPM
As a ex-GP motorcycle racer, I have generally dispised harleys or anything that looks or underperforms on paved roads. I have raced pupose built racing 125 and 250cc GP bikes in the US, Europe and Japan. But Jesse James motorcylces sparked my interest in artisan motorcycles. He is an artist who produces works of art. His designs are unconventional yet graceful.
One look at designs like The Radial Engine bike he built demonstrate his genius and just how radical his designs can go. His less radical designs leave me in awe in their compactness and simplicity. The organic look and feel of his designs are obviously the result of hand-worked materials that make me want to own one. His respect for Ducatis and MV Agustas demonstrate his openmindedness and respect for performance oriented manufacturers and designs. I don’t look at his motorcycles as such, rather I look at them no differently than a sculpture.
For Greg, who are you to call Jessie James a racist dbag. He works for a living like alot of people don’t, and hide under the minority banner and are racist exempted. Probably fits your description Jackass!
@shovelman: perhaps the phrase “like a lot of people don’t, and hide under the minority banner” might seem ok to you, to the rest of us it sure looks bigoted. As to american sport bikes, I think indian could have become this except for the fact that every owner has tried to reproduce it as the 53 chief which really ran the factory into the ground. The 101 scout,and sport scouts of the 30′s were smoking hot little machines, and with overhead valve kits could match the horsepower produced by the sporters of the 70′s.
Eric Buell is an amazing egomanic, and his bikes are quite possibly the ugliest on the road.
OH I’M SO sorry…I actually thought u were dead…
New the name, not the face , and I just saw u baggin out pilgrams….m.m.m.m. how funny.
why cant u play the trumpet? yeah I get IT…
Who r u…and what else can u do?
jesse james homemade toolboxes…What colours are they in.
I have to agree… that bike u designed…ahh..I LIKE IT..
Im sure This chick was on the radio…(oz) talkin bout u and what u do…u know…If ur the guy resting from s.bullock… she was atellin all about ur…package and how it works… Some hoe bags …I hope u dont give a shit…or did u just set it all up..
need to make a coffee… wanna check some of those tatts, no I not tryin to tune u…
Yes… mysterious… you have one of my grand fathers names.
CHEERS…sky…
im not trying to give o.winfrey shit…she does that all by herself…
Can:t u get a replacement shift…she stay way where she is u come down under give me one of ur custom made tool boxes… that sounds much more feesible than a potential terrorrists attack…
Where the remote… shes on the right now..
I should’nt talk to strangers..
you guys all ssuck you dont even know jessee i help put hes figer 8 cars together sandra was eight behind him thats why she went to txas they bouth had houses there out of the bull like you all go jessee and sandea stay happy f cal