Shipped up and on its way to the Isle of Man, we can finally now see more than test shots of the Mugen Shinden Ni and get its basic racing specifications. The electric superbike that John McGuinness will ride in the 2013 TT Zero race at the Isle of Man TT, the Mugen Shinden Ni represents that evolution of the Japanese firm’s design, having now a TT race under its belt. Like its main competitor MotoCzysz, Team Mugen is eyeing a 110 mph lap around the Mountain Course, which would be a pretty remarkable one-year advancement for either team. With Mr. McPint at the helm, and seemingly brimming with on-board energy, Mugen is a serious contender.
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.
Naked version looks somewhat cooler.
Dear motorcycle manufacturers,
Nobody wants to hear your favorite song.
Everyone wants to hear your bike.
This bike is at the top of my list for a sport touring moto but at a rumored $30k, I think my hard earned American dollars will end up funding a Multistrada 1200 S or a BMW K1600GT.
Love the bike, but that is a pretty amateurish vid. Loose the gang signs, kissing the camera, wacky camera angles, perhaps show the bike going around a corner for once, and as others have mentioned, ditch the music and let the bike sing.
Well this should make the morons at Harley sick after they killed the Buell. I like the bike but I do not like the chain drive. This is a half ass sport touring bike and more of a sport bike. I suppose it does not have the guts to compete as a sport bike so they are calling it a “sport touring” bike. I will stick with the “real” sport touring bike – the BMW R1200RT. These guys should have gotten together with Erick Buell.
The way the “crease” in the tank for the knees flows into the lower, side fairing is a nice touch. No other angles muck it up.
The angled pictured from the rear is one of the best views a bike with bags has ever produced.
I agree about moto companies playing music during their promos…maybe a very (very) short sound bite at the beginning and end, but with a V4, why wouldn’t you let that be heard? Now that Daytona is over, maybe that will subside?
Very cool trip ahead of them
Is that my imagination or am I seeing a carbon fiber tank on the naked at 0:39 (and matching front fender a couple seconds later)/
Not your imagination. That’s the higher-spec MST-R without its clothes on according to Motus. It has carbon fiber everywhere.
Looks like it will be overpriced, heavy, slow, but with great sound and patriotic appeal. Golly, why does that seem familiar?
MST = blah (it IS a sport touring bike, but hey ducati made one sexy, so no excuses)
MST-R = VMAX-killer with better aesthetics…awesome
I agree, nix the tunes let the engine sing for us. Hopefully when released the final drive will be belt/chain on the touring/naked respectively
I should clarify, according to Motus the MST and MST-R will be the same bike aesthetically, except one will have more carbon parts.
Motus started trotting the MST-R around with its clothes off, which has everyone thinking the R is a naked streetfighter, which it isn’t…although all the positive comments about the bike have them thinking about building a naked version.
Jake – reliable 120 ft lbs. of torque & 140 hp is slow? relative to what and on what road?
The weight is not out of the range of existing bikes in its market segment either.
I like it and think it’ll be an excellent sport-tourer. I’m not sure how sound it is from a business standpoint, but from a rider’s standpoint I’m on board.
Chain drive is no problem these days with modern chains. Older riders have had bad experiences I think when chains were crap. A decent modern chain is good for 40k+ miles and needs adjustment no more than 2-3 times during its lifetime. That’s better than many of my friends get from their BMW final drives (and I know one guy who’s been through three complete final drive units in 40k miles!). Simple, light, efficient and cheap to change final drive ratios with a chain. Suits me well.