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.

Valentino Rossi Finally Joins the 21st Century & Twitter

10/11/2011 @ 9:00 pm, by Jensen Beeler19 COMMENTS

For being a motorcycle mega-brand in his own right, Valentino Rossi has been slow to adapt to this crazy new thing called the internet. A series of tubes, the internet has been a remarkable breakthrough on a variety of levels, changing the paradigm of how we eat, sleep, and waste our lunch breaks at work. Helping teenage girls gossip about their latest crushes, aiding in the massive distribution of pornography to middle-aged men who hide in their basements from their wives and children, and allowing no-talent journalistic hacks to masquerade around as proper motorcycle journalists, there is literally no telling how the internet will change our lives next, and what industries it will turn on their head.

Well get ready for another shockwave ladies and gentlemen, as the G.O.A.T. himself, Valentino Rossi, has hopped on this interweb bandwagon with full 0 & 1 force, first by finally creating his own official website, and now by signing up for a thing called Twitter. Tweeting, twatting, twittering so far in only Italian, Rossi was one of the last hold-outs of MotoGP riders to embrace the micro-blogging service (Randy de Puniet just got on Twitter this week too we might add. Thanks Lauren). Rossi’s move is sure to create a stir with the VR46 crowd, as his legion of fans can now take time out from their busy days of lathering neon yellow paint all of their bodies, and hang onto every one of Rossi’s 140 character messages.

So far, Rossi has tweeted about go-karting, his injured finger, and traveling to Melbourne. We wait with bated breath to see what photo the nine-time World Champion first tweets from his account. Bellissima.

In all seriousness though, it is interesting to see how long it’s taken the popular Italian rider to embrace marketing himself online and with social media. Perhaps the forefather and king of personal branding in motorcycle racing, Rossi is often credited as being a genius in promoting himself and his brand in the paddock. However when it comes to new technology, the Ducati Corse rider has been woefully behind the curve (on a side note, the MotoGP paddock as a whole is a bit slow on this whole “internet fad” thing, but that’s a different story for a different time). In a space where rival Jorge Lorenzo has over 270,000 followers, Rossi has a long way to go with his current 1,700 devote twitterees; though, we imagine as news of his digital hipness spreads this weekend, that number is surely going to skyrocket.

There’s an interesting parallel here about how MotoGP is changing, both from a (new) media perspective and from the age-old reality of new guns challenging the supremacy of the old guard. With Rossi’s supremacy on the track now being questioned, and certainly not helped by the ails of the Ducati Desmosedici, there begins as well an interesting dialogue of what purpose MotoGP serves its teams, rider, and more importantly sponsors. Is it enough to be a master on two wheels, or does a massive following of fans and marketable characteristics speak more loudly on racing’s ROI. We’re not sure, but Andrea Dovizioso might have some interesting insights.

Tagged under: brand, internet, marketing, MotoGP, new media, online media, personal brand, social media, twitter, Valentino Rossi, VR46

Comment:

Beary says:
October 12, 2011 at 12:31 AM
Huh ? Rossi has had a really good website for ages now.
kumo says:
October 12, 2011 at 4:16 AM
7.713 followers now. More than 3000 in the last 12h. Not so bad for an egg-avatar user. I’ll bet he could beat Lorenzo also in followers…
LouTheDuce ™ says:
October 12, 2011 at 4:50 AM
RT @Asphalt_Rubber: Valentino Rossi Finally Joins the 21st Century & Twitter http://t.co/2agmd3ti
カレンチャン＠うまこ says:
October 12, 2011 at 5:39 AM
ロッシがツイッター始めた件で記事が一つできてる http://t.co/8VMtDOxZ #motogp_jp
SBPilot says:
October 12, 2011 at 5:50 AM
Lorenzo has dismal followers considering how much he tries to promote his twitter. I wonder why…(rhetoric).
Rossi will surpass a lot of people on twitter I’m sure. Randy de Puniet has 1500 without a single tweet! lol!
Rexr says:
October 12, 2011 at 8:10 AM
Who give a F**K….really
keet says:
October 12, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Rexr, thank you! i LOVE motorcycle racing, aside from a short post-race interview, i couldn’t care less what they have to say!
305ed says:
October 12, 2011 at 1:17 PM
12,706 hangers-on at 4:20 EST… LMAO!
Andre says:
October 12, 2011 at 4:48 PM
“Valentino Rossi has been slow to adapt to this crazy new thing called the internet”
No… he’s just been too busy with REAL life to waste his time chatting mindlessly to people he will never meet…. many others in the world are also busy getting things done. Not everyone wanders aimlessly through the interweb time sucking chit chat machine called Twitter. I mean come on, there’s a reason why its call “twitter”!
Jake Fox says:
October 12, 2011 at 10:21 PM
Y’all do recognize the irony of criticizing social media by commenting on a blog, right?
mxs says:
October 13, 2011 at 10:33 AM
Not really. Big difference in my opinion between blog as such (or any other motorcycle related website) and Twitter or Facebook. There’s something called informational value. Twitter and Facebook come at zero for me and many other people I know of.
Jake Fox says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:45 AM
Well then… http://nowsourcing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bush_doing_it_wrong.jpg
Andre says:
October 13, 2011 at 3:08 PM
Jake
I think you should focus on the content….
Social media such as Twitter exchange dribble.
Places like A & R are fantastic sources of useful and interesting information.
Jensen Beeler says:
October 13, 2011 at 3:12 PM
Thanks guys, but to be honest, if you want the latest inside MotoGP info, you should be on Twitter. There’s lot’s of good stuff coming from riders, teams, and members of the paddock being shared 140 chars at a time.
Andre says:
October 13, 2011 at 5:03 PM
Jensen.
Thanks for the suggestion but I find your work excellent; we get the “meat” without any of the nonsense right here. Not sure about others but I do not have the time to pick through 140 character snippets to find out what is going on….. its all about efficient use of time. When you are really busy (like owning your own business) this site is great.
Beary says:
October 19, 2011 at 6:15 AM
I agree with Jensen. I have only just created a twitter account after I saw a friend getting heaps of inside info and pictures straight from the riders and team mechanics. It’s a fantastic information resource for fans of MotoGP and also can be very, very funny.
Jauhari says:
October 23, 2011 at 3:00 PM
The Twitter Username not available anymore :( here is the message from Twitter
Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!
Search for a username, first or last name:
Elena says:
October 25, 2011 at 12:41 AM
” it is interesting to see how long it’s taken the popular Italian rider to embrace marketing himself online and with social media. ” He don’t need to marketing !!!! He’s too busy to be awesome than wasting time with social networks!
Beary says:
October 25, 2011 at 1:00 AM
Actually – it takes older people a while to embrace twitter, far longer than shall we say under 25′s. Twitter is still seen by the older generations as being full worthless drivel. I viewed it this way for years, I’m 44 so I’m no spring chicken.
What most people who don’t use Twitter don’t know is that you control the content. You follow the people you want to follow, so no content that you get is worthless – unless the people you follow are worthless. Then you have no-one to blame but yourselves. Just cause Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher get the Twitter headlines, doesn’t mean you are automatically subscribing to their vaccuous drivel.
Try it. You’ll get WAY more rounded views of riders and teams mindsets than the media will bring you. By dismissing it outright you’re just burying your head in the sand.

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