Do you like carbon fiber? Do you like steel trellis frames? Do you like 160hp motorcycles that weigh 390 lbs dry? Well then, we have just the thing for you: 2013 Bimota DB8 Italia.

Pretty much the Bimota DB8 with some “Italian” themed paint, we won’t go into too much detail since the DB8, DB9, & DB11 share pretty much everything except the bodywork…which is probably the only criticism you can lobby at any of those machines.

Bimota sent us these up-close high-resolution photos of the Bimota DB8 Italia from EICMA, and we thought we’d share them with our loyal readers. Enjoy.

Before Honda started working on its road-going version of its V4 MotoGP race bike, there was the Ducati Desmosedici RR. A fairly close approximation to its namesake, 1,500 units of the Desmosedici RR were built by the Bologna Brand, with the coup de grâce being the hyperbike’s $72,000 price tag.

Despite its racing pedigree, with a MotoGP World Championship at the hands of Casey Stoner too boot, sales for the Ducati Desmosedici RR were surprisingly sluggish. You can even find a few remaining models still on the showroom floors of some select Ducati dealerships.

Maybe it was the price tag, maybe it was the public’s less-than-adoring relationship with the new MotoGP Champion, or maybe it was the fact that the production-based Ducati Superbike 1098R was said to be faster than the RR around certain tracks (Motorcyclist & MCN). Maybe it was a function of all the above.

However, in our eyes, the Ducati Desmosedici RR remains one of the most drool-worthy sport bikes produced in the past decade — after all, it really is as close as you’re going to get to a road-going GP machine…besides the Aprilia RSV4 Factory APRC.

After Ducati completed its production run of the Ducati Desmosedici RR, many began to speculate as to the company’s encore uber-exclusive model. Despite Ducati’s internal belief that the Desmosedici RR was a relative failure as a model (it would be safe to say that Ducati didn’t expect sales of the RR to take nearly as long as they did), as far as halo products go, the Desmosedici RR ticks all the right boxes, and begs for a next-generation.

In many ways, the Ducati 1199 Panigale is the company’s follow-up to the Desmo, and interestingly enough, the Panigale is now also beginning to struggle with sales, admittedly not to the same extent as the RR.

Looking at the photos after the jump, you can see a lot of the Panigale in the Desmosedici, which is of course due to the Ducati 1199 Panigale’s MotoGP-inspired “frameless” chassis design that uses the motor as the basis for the motorcycle’s structure.

Building the headstock/airbox off the forward-facing cylinder head, and the tail/rear-subframe off the rearward cylinder head on the Panigale, we see the same design elements in the Ducati Desmosedici RR, except maybe one or two generations behind the current superbike (Ducati went from a steel trellis design, to a carbon design, to an aluminum design, and now rests on a aluminum perimeter-frame design).

Allowing Ducati to make a ridiculously light motorcycle, the design philosophy holds some serious strong potential. We don’t imagine the thought process on this chassis is over just quite yet, regardless of what is occurring in MotoGP right now, though Ducati Corse certainly has its work cutout for itself in that arena.

Is there a point to all this? Maybe not, beyond something to mull over on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Daydreaming fodder is after the jump.

One of the great A&R travesties of 2011 was my inability to swing by the Radical Ducati shop in Madrid, Spain as I was traveling to the Valencian GP. Truly a fan of their pieced-together two-wheeled works of art, my fragile heart surely would not withstood having to leave Radical Ducati’s workshop, had I been able to get out of the Madrid-Barajas Airport and down to the city center before my connecting flight departed. Ni modo, así es la vida.

Who knows what 2012 has in store for my travel itinerary, so until I can make good on that visit, we all will have to tide ourselves over with the photos and videos that these creative Spaniards produce, and at the top of the drool-worthy list is the Radical Ducati RAD02 Imola café racer. A tribute to the bike that carried Paul Smart and Bruno Spaggiari to victory in the 200-mile race at Imola in 1972, the RAD02 Imola is one of best examples of the quality work that this small Spanish outfit produces on a regular basis.

Releasing an artsy build/assembly video of the Radical Ducati RAD02 Imola, we already feel the custom motorcycle tugging again at our heartstrings, and I can’t help but wonder what other projects Pepo, Reyes, and the rest of the Radical Ducati crew have for 2012. Enjoy the video after the jump, and be sure to bring a towel to mop up the mess.

UPDATE: According to Mission Motors’ Edward West, the single-sided swingarm weighs 13.6 lbs alone, and 18.8 lbs with the slider for the chain tensioner/wheelbase adjuster installed.

The Mission R electric superbike by Mission Motors is one of those motorcycles that looks great by itself in a photo, and then looks even better once you see it in person. Up-close it is easier to appreciate the finer details that went into making the Mission R, like the all-carbon “fuel tank” and battery enclosure, the chrome-moly trellis frame, and of course the single-piece billet aluminum swingarm that was produced by Speedymoto.

Like most things built by Speedymoto, the Mission R swingarm could be a piece of art in its own right (I’ve got a few Speedymoto parts on my Streetfighter for this very reason), and the Oregon-based company has posted some behind the scenes shots and details of its work. Photos and more after the jump.