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Your eyes are not seeing double. This is in fact a four-wheeled vehicle on the pages of Asphalt & Rubber. It also a KTM. It is a 600hp, Audi-powered, KTM race car actually.

Officially dubbed the KTM X-Bow GTX, this project has evolved over the last 12 years from a peppy open-roof track car for the rich, to a well-sorted racing machine that is ready for a GT2 class near you.

Here is some interesting automotive news for you that has bearing over our two-wheeled world, as CNN is reporting that more Americans are behind on their car loans than ever before.

The news accounts for two trends that we are seeing in the United States. One, the decline of automobile ownership; and two, the rising debt load amongst citizens, especially millennial buyers.

What this translates into the car world – namely that buyers are increasingly defaulting on their auto loans – likely bears the same reality in the motorcycle industry, since so many motorbikes are bought through financed payment schemes.

This past week was the first time I have ever driven a motorcycle. I have ridden quite a few motorcycles in my time, just never one with three wheels, a seatbelt, and steering wheel. It felt very weird…like riding a scooter.

The Polaris Slingshot is not a motorcycle though. Three years after its initial debut, the Slingshot is now considered an autocycle in 40 states and counting.

As an autocycle, the Polaris Slingshot is held to the same standards as a motorbike, but these 40 states do away with the requirement for the rider, I mean driver, to have a motorcycle endorsement on their license.

Armed with a normal driver’s license and a helmet (where applicable), there are no boundaries to driving a Slingshot. This opens interesting doors for Polaris, which is good, because the Slingshot is an interesting machine. Let me explain.

We have all been there, right? You know, that moment when you are at the gas station, accidentally lock your keys inside the car, and then use a claw hammer to smash the window…RIGHT???

Of course you have, and, now Andrea Iannone has been there too.

Two things strike us from this video: 1) the back windows on a Porsche Cayenne are impressively resilient, and 2) we are glad Iannone got a contract with ECSTAR Suzuki for next season, because he would starve if he had to resort to carpentry.

Yamaha Motor Corporation is known better for its powersports offerings, but what if the tuning fork brand followed Suzuki and Honda down the rabbit hole of also making a automobiles?

Yamaha might just be considering such a path, releasing what it calls the Sports Ride concept at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.

The two-seater concept is very sporty, and Yamaha is quoting a 750kg weight…that’s roughly 1,600 lbs. While we are well into Lotus territory, there is no information at this time as to what could be powering the Sports Ride concept (if it even exists outside of computer renderings).

We’re really enjoying the work of Tamás Jakus, better known as Jakusa Design. If that name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, we’re sure his recent work on the zeffed-out Triumph Tiger 800 will surely strike you as familiar. This time, Jakus has imagined a Ducati-powered car.

That concept is already in our headspace, thanks to the engineers at Volkswagen making the Volkswagen XL Sport, but Jakus’ version is far more appealing to us.

Extruding the distinctive intake of the Panigale across the trellis frame of an Aeriel Atom type oversized go-kart – complete with pigeon-toed three spoke wheels, just like the superbike – there are enough Ducati design elements to link the car to the brand to make the exercise convincing.

Leave your thoughts and your best Volkswagen emissions jokes in the comments section.

The big news this week might be about how Volkswagen falsified emissions reports on its diesel-powered automobiles – a move that today lead to Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn stepping down from his position in the company, and VW stock dropping nearly 30%, at the time of this writing.

Less well-known though is that Volkswagen has also lost its long-fought battle with Suzuki over the Japanese company’s stock ownership. VW and Suzuki were supposed to untie the knot back in 2011, but Volkswagen did not go quietly into that good night.

Taking the case to arbitration, the London Court of International Arbitration has finally handed the two parties its verdict. As such, Volkswagen will have to sell its 19.9% stake back to Suzuki.

We already teased you with the Honda Project 2&4 two weeks ago, and now Honda has seen fit to release its RC213V-powered über-kart for our viewing pleasure. Sure it has four wheels, but the 2&4 is a pretty impressive machine.

At its heart is the 999cc MotoGP engine, in 212hp trim and revving to 13,000 rpm. That V4 engine is mated to a six-speed dual-clutch transmission (naturally), with the total vehicle package weighing 892 lbs.

Honda says that the Project 2&4 is based off the Honda RA272, circa 1965, though the design is obviously more avant-garde than the Formula One race car.

The 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show is just around the corner, and while the event is typically a four-wheeled affair, Honda is cooking up something that piques our two-wheeled interest here at Asphalt & Rubber.

Calling it the Honda Project 2&4, the concept is simple: a futuristic and sporty car that is powered by Honda’s championship-winning, 1000cc, 90°, V4, RC213V MotoGP engine. See, it’s piquing your interest too.

Electric vehicles are finding a bit more traction in the four-wheeled world than in the two-wheeled market (see what I did there?), and as such we are starting to see more plug-in electric cars from established OEMs hitting the streets already or within a model year or two of being ready for public consumption.

One of the largest global OEMs, BMW is not keen to miss out on the next movement in people-moving, and thus  has been teasing its BMW i3 project for some time now. A plug-in electric with roughly a 100 mile range, BMW’s tests with the Mini E project show that most automobile drivers travel less than 100 miles in a day, but still a significant number of would-be buyers are put off by the low-range figures and daunting uncertainty about charging.

Following in the footpaths of cars like the Chevy Volt, the BMW has announced that the i3 will have an optional gas engine in it as well, serving as an electric generator to recharge the BMW i3’s battery pack. With BMW tipping that the engine will “come from the BMW family” and be in the 600cc range, we don’t have to rack our brains long to realize that BMW will be cross-polinating its electric car program with a motorcycle engine from BMW Motorrad.

When Ducati Corse announced that it had “partnered” with Mercedes-Benz’s in-house tuning brand AMG at the LA Auto Show, the deal raised a few eyebrows and sent shock waves across the keyboards of journalists as everyone asked themselves “what could this all mean?!” At the time it was obvious that the AMG brand would be featured on the Desmosedici GP11 race bikes of Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi, and that the sponsorship was just one of many that Ducati had secured, likely having something to do with a certain nine-time World Champion.

However the deal still stuck out as more than a straight advertisement transaction, with Ducati even saying that the relationship would be reciprocal, with the Bologna Brand helping hock a few Stuttgart Sleds in Mercedes-Benz’s ad campaigns. We got our first taste of how that cross-pollination of a partnership would look almost immediately after the announcement, with the two brands engaging in a sort of teaser video of what was to come further down the road (road…get it? ha!).

Then of course more recently we got another taste as the Ducati Superbike 848 EVO made a cameo appearance in a commercial that pitted it against a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupe. A lesser known fact to the public, but one readily apparent to journalists who attended the Ducati Diavel launch in Los Angeles, was that Mercedes-Benz has been supplying AMG-tuned vehicles to Ducati to use at press, media, and public events.

While it would seem that the two premium brands are exploring the limits of their marketing synergy, and how two wheels can compliment four wheels, and vice versa, reliable sources close to Asphalt & Rubber have revealed that the partnership goes deeper than just a joint-marketing campaign, and is in fact a part of an elaborate purchasing agreement that sees Mercedes-Benz acquiring Ducati Motor Holdings should certain criteria be met.