I will be honest about my ego, I like being right…but that doesn’t mean that sometimes I wish I was wrong, and such is the case with the delivery date of the beautiful MV Agusta F3 Serie Oro. It is hard to believe that we first saw the MV Agusta F3 break cover back in October 2010, with the Italian company’s three-cylindered supersport being spied and rumored well before even that date, as far back as 2009. Then breaking the hearts of many Italian motorcycle fans, MV Agusta announced that the F3 would not be a 2011 model year bike.

Having issues getting its parts suppliers to deal with a company with a horrible credit record, pricing of the MV Agusta F3 quickly rose from $9,000, to $10,000, and then finally to $13,495 MSRP (Note: All US bikes will comes with a quick-shifter, pushing the MSRP now to $13,995). This of course would not be the price for the limited edition MV Agusta F3 Serie Oro, which was set to sell ahead of the base model. At $27,900 MSRP, the “gold series” F3 has been operating on a similar sliding scale as the price tag of the base model, as the delivery date of the bike was first pushed back from March, to May, and now is set for early July. But wait, there’s more.

It is ironic that the high point of the relationship between Valentino Rossi and Ducati came as he rode the first few meters out of pit lane and on to the track at the Valencia MotoGP test in November 2010. All of the excitement that had been building since the first rumors emerged in early June that the nine time world champion would be leaving Yamaha to join the iconic Italian manufacturer culminated as Rossi emerged from a crowd of photographers and powered down pit lane, watched by a large group of fans who had come to the test to see this very moment.

From that point on, it was all downhill. Within a few laps, it was clear that Rossi would struggle with this bike, and though everyone was putting a brave face on his performance, he left the test in 15th place, one-and-three-quarters of a second behind his ex-teammate Jorge Lorenzo, and 1.7 seconds behind Casey Stoner, the man whose bike he was now riding and who had left Ducati to join Honda. The contrast between the two could not be greater: where Stoner was bullying the Honda around as if he had been born on the RC212V, Rossi – handicapped in part by his still-injured shoulder – looked like a frightened rookie, thoroughly intimidated by the bike.

Rossi learned two important but disturbing things at that test: the first was that the Ducati was a much, much worse bike than he had expected. Stoner’s brilliance and the genius of his crew chief Cristian Gabbarini had flattered the machine, disguising its massive weakness. The second was that Casey Stoner had to be a much, much better rider than he thought if the Australian had managed to be competitive on the bike that had so shaken Rossi’s confidence. Throughout the year, as Rossi struggled, he was forced to answer the same question over and over again. Why could he, the man with nine world titles and widely regarded as one of the greatest racers of all time, not be competitive on the bike that Stoner had won three races on the previous season, and put on the podium at Valencia before handing it over to Rossi? “Casey rode this bike in a special way,” Rossi answered every time. “I cannot ride this bike like that.”

Understanding that Stoner could be so competitive on the Ducati must have been a blow to Rossi’s confidence and his self image. After their legendary and heart-stopping duel at Laguna Seca, Rossi had felt he had the measure of the Australian, beating Stoner more often than not and taking the 2008 and 2009 titles. Once he realized that throughout that period, Stoner had been bringing a knife to a gunfight and still regularly beating him – even after the introduction of the spec tire – Rossi must have asked questions of his own ability.

The news of the 2011 Aprilia RSV4 R APRC got me thinking today about where the sport bike market is headed from a big picture perspective. The sport bike market has been dominated the constant need to develop motorcycles with more power, less weight, and new performance enhancing technologies, and you’d be hard pressed to find a year where the bike with the most horsepower wasn’t the top-seller in this category (case in point: the complete sales domination of the BMW S1000RR during 2010).

For years the motorcycle manufacturers, especially the Japanese, have been painting themselves into a corner by constantly having to one-up each other with horsepower figures in order to sell motorcycles in this segment. With bikes like the 2011 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R approaching the 200hp barrier, the question about “how much power is enough?” has been cropping up, and it certainly could be that we’re approaching the point in time where the relevancy of this metric is losing it’s power (pun moderately intended). So what will be the new kingmaker for sport bikes? The electronics package.

BMW is halfway through releasing a four-part video on the future of transportation, which explores a multitude of ideas including infrastructure, city dwelling, personal transport, population growth, and the environment. BMW obviously is approaching the issue with its automotive hat squarely on its head, and doesn’t directly deal with motorcycles, but when you stop and think about it, cars and bikes are wrapped up in the same situation. While the only the first two videos have been released, there’s already some interesting concepts to think about.

While we wait for Part 3 (Feb. 15th) and Part 4 (Feb. 22nd), chew on these facts and figures: over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, automobiles are parked about 90% of the time, and there’s roughly five parking spots for every car (that’s 1,500 sqft of space just for a single car!). It sure seems like motorcycles could help solve that utilization/space problem.

As Ducati gets ready to unveil its 2011 line-up in Milan tomorrow, there’s one bike we are more than certain won’t make the showcase: the Ducati Tron Lightcycle. While Ducati is expected to make a cameo-appearance in the new Tron Legacy movie, we don’t think the Bologna-based company’s product placement will go quite as far as this Ducati fan’s imagination. One of the better photoshops we’ve seen in a while, the oil filter protruding from the bottom of the bike makes us squirm with delight. Apparently in the future though, Ducatis have a wet-clutch, hmm…

Source: Ducati.ms

Blasphemy, heresy, stupidity, sacrilege, un-American, and downright irreverence. Go ahead, get all those words out of your system. I’ll wait.

The default opinion of marketers, analysts, and the general population is that Harley-Davidson has one of the strongest brands in the United States, this being confirmed by the fact that every business student in America has studied Harley’s marketing efforts if they’ve ever taken a brand management course. So why would I start a three-part series on how to fix Harley-Davidson by arguing to change one of the most revered marketing houses in the motorcycle industry?

Giving credit where credit is due, Harley-Davidson, or I should say its admirers in business school academia, wrote the book on demand generation marketing geared towards the baby-boomer generation. However, in defending this market position, Harley-Davidson has painted itself into a corner by only engaging a very small segment of the population with its product. Unless they redefine and reposition their company image and who it resonates with, Harley-Davidson is going to watch the continued erosion of its footing in the motorcycle industry, and also the continued deterioration of its only industry leading quality: its brand.

Most of the internet is still abuzz over the news of Buell’s demise (don’t worry, your friends who read print magazines will hear the news in a month or two), but for the people at MV Agusta, right now is perhaps even more precarious because their future is uncertain. Harley-Davidson’s decision to circle the wagons around the HD brand, meant for MV that they would once again be up for auction to the highest bidder. This timing perhaps comes at the absolute worst moment, as the Italian brand was finally having to come to terms with how it would move forward as a company without Massimo Tamburini inking the designs.