Honda has announced that it will field a factory entry in the upcoming 2013 Dakar Rally, which starts January 2013 and goes through Peru, Argentina, and Chile. Enlisting four riders to ride on the yet to be released HRC adventure racer, the return of HRC factory team to The Dakar is a boon for the series, which has been dominated by KTM in recent years.

Coming into the series with a pedigree of winning in the 1980′s, HRC hopes that Portuguese rider Helder Rodrigues, who came in third in the 2012 Dakar Rally, will be able to contend with KTM’s factory-backed efforts for Marc Coma and Cyril Despres.

I imagine that for some, despite the business case to the contrary, a Husqvarna should always play well in the dirt, which seems to be the mantra with the folks over at Touratech. Taking Husky’s first true-born road bike, and baptizing it with mud, the Touratech Nuda-X-Cross looks perfectly capable going where the sidewalk ends.

Shod with a set of knobbies, some purpose-built bodywork from Touratech’s line, and a new attitude, we dig what the ADV-touring parts company has done with Swedish brand’s latest offering. Not just a looker, Touratech intends on racing two Touratech Nuda-X-Cross bikes in the grueling Erzberg Rodeo, held in the Austrian Alps. Even that makes our street-bound hearts skip a beat. More photos after the jump.

First breaking cover at the Indy Dealer Expo, BRD Motorcycles has finally gotten the BRD RedShift MX into the studio for some glamor shots, and it is showing off its “goooollllddddd” paint scheme very nicely indeed. The off-road variant to the BRD RedShift SM prototype that we tested several months ago, the RedShift MX is the San Francisco company’s electric equivalent to a 250cc lites-class off-roader. Promising a super-linear 40+ hp on tap, the model currently has 5.2 kWh of battery on-board, which should be good for two hours of mixed use.

Tipping the scales at 270 lbs in street trim, the BRD RedShift MX is a paltry 250 lbs in racing form, which makes for a very competitive power-to-weight ratio in this category of dirt bike. Priced at $14,995, this electric dirt bike is still an expensive proposition (even with its WP suspension), though its competitive race performance, low-cost of use, and super-smooth electric drive train helps make it a more attractive package for more serious riders. Enjoy the high-resolution photos after the jump.

AMA Supercross was in Daytona this past weekend, and apparently so was the rain. While the day’s earlier sessions were relatively unaffected, the evening’s main event looked like it was held in the bogs of the Florida Everglades, rather than the Daytona International Speedway.

With the AMA shortening the 450 race by four laps, many competitors still dropped out mid-race, leaving James Stewart to win with a comfortable seven and a half second lead. Similarly, the lites-class ran the course with three fewer laps than previously planned, with Justin Barcia continuing his dominance of the 2012 season.

While virtually every sport is more fun when played in the mud, after looking at the photos from Daytona, we are sure many racers will be glad to be leaving Florida behind them.

There is a reason our humble motorcycle blog is called Asphalt & Rubber, as we tend to stick to the street side of the motorcycling equation. Growing up in a house where motorcycles were verboden, I often think that I’m the only person “in the industry” that didn’t grow up riding a dirt bike (something I hope to rectify this year, so more on that later). Still, I wanted to give some love to our friends across the bridge, as BRD Motorcycles is about to unveil the next motorcycle in its electric line-up: the BRD RedShift MX.

As the name implies, the MX version is not terribly dissimilar from the BRD RedShift SM prototype that I rode at Infineon a couple months ago, and will make its public debut at the Indy Dealer Expo later this week. Changing out the brakes, sprockets, wheels, and tires, the conversion from SM to MX seems fairly straight-forward with the BRD RedShift (I’d expect to see some kind of kit available from BRD for this). Perhaps that’s because the digital drivetrain is where most of the magic happens as far as making the RedShift a dirt-clawing demon instead of a street-chewing monster (can you gasoline motor do that?).

Taking the “anti-lock brakes don’t work off-road” mentality head-on, Husqvarna has debuted an anti-lock braking system (ABS) package designed specifically for off-road use. Derived from BMW’s extensive experience with the technology (BMW Motorrad was the first OEM to fit ABS to a production motorcycle), Husqvarna has taken the lessons learned by its German parent company, specifically BMW’s Race ABS from the S1000RR superbike, and adapted the technology for its dirt models for off-road racing.

Continuing to prove our “electronics are the new horsepower” hypothesis and fitting the flagship Husqvarna TE 449 with the new off-road ABS technology, Husqvarna hopes to make a statement not only about the use of ABS in off-street conditions, but is taking things a step further by putting anti-lock brakes on a race-bred dirt bike. The key to the off-road ABS technology from Husqvarna is two-fold. First, Husqvarna’s dual-channel ABS still allows for the rear tire to be locked-up while under heavy braking (this can also be achieved on the S1000RR’s ABS package under the “slick” mode setting). Second, the system, like its road-going counterpart, is extremely light, and only adds 1.5kg (3.3 lbs) of weight to the bike.

The Asphalt & Rubber Bothan spies were hard at work over the weekend. Taking a break from finding ALL of the Easter Eggs in the A&R office, the Bothans did what they do best, and found the entry list to the AMA Mini Moto SX that’s going on next week in Las Vegas.

Sure enough in the paperwork was our favorite Ashland-based motorcycle company, which isn’t surprising since Brammo likes to go racing, but raises some eyebrows since you might recall the Mini Moto event is an off-road supercross-style race. Since a company doesn’t just decide to go racing on a whim, this surely must mean that Brammo has dirt bikes on the brain.

The Motorcycle Industry Council is reporting that US motorcycle sales are up 7% in Q1 of 2011, with 102,547 units being sold in the year’s first three months. Leading the charge were scooter sales, which were up nearly 50% to 6,246 units, while on-road units were up as well, pushing 70,879 units in Q1 (a 6.9% gain).

Despite the strong numbers from on-road and dual-sport models, off-road vehicles did not fare as well, with ATV sales down 16% and off-road motorcycle sales down 5.5% (47,702 & 18,725 units respectively), making 2011 still a mixed bag depending on what side of the industry you are on.

In an interview with Alan Cathcart, Erik Buell talks to the famed motorcycle journalist about his departure from Harley-Davidson, and what the future holds for Erik Buell and Erik Buell Racing. Perhaps one of the most interesting things to come out of the pair’s conversation (read a translated version at Motonline) is the fact that in late-2006/early-2007 Harley-Davidson killed off a project to build a 450cc Buell off-road machine. Still believing that there is a market for a Buell-branded dirt bike, Buell confessed to Cathcart that EBR is taking up the 450cc project again, which uses a special single-cylinder Rotax motor as its power plant.

Asphalt & Rubber was recently one of a few blogs, along with the usual suspects from the American media, to be invited out to Arizona for Yamaha’s press launch of the Super Ténéré adventure-tourer motorcycle (because we know Americans have no idea what to do with an accented “e”, think “tay-nay-ray” for pronunciation…or just cheat like us and say “ten-air-ray”). The earth is orange here in Arizona, and between the mesas and evergreen forests, Sedona makes for a picturesque setting, that’s away from the bustling metropolitans and city life. This serves our purpose well as its an ideal environment to show-off the 2012 Yamaha Super Ténéré against the desert’s beautiful backdrop and star-filled skies, but it also serves as the type of destination Super Ténéré owners would likely visit on Yamaha’s new motorcycle, putting us right in the shoes of the target customer.

A market segment based around compromises, adventure-tourers sit somewhere between the juxtaposition of dirt and touring bikes. Based on the idea that the journey doesn’t end where the road does, the adventure-tourer market has taken over from the Harley-Davidson crowd as the next expression of freedom on the open road. Essentially created by the BMW GS series, it is impossible to talk about adventure bikes without mentioning the GS, but other manufacturers as well have entered into this growing market, coming up with different ideas on what riders are looking for when they want to escape from the daily grind.

Built to ride both on and off the street, adventure bikes pose the unique problem of having to decide where to make the trade-offs between these two different purposes, and in this regard we find the 2012 Yamaha Super Ténéré, leaning more heavily to the street side of this equation than say the BMW R1200GS. As a publication that centers around street bikes generally (hence the name Asphalt & Rubber), we too lean towards the street side of that equation, making the Yamaha Super Ténéré a strong congruency to what we look for in this motorcycle segment, and a bike we wouldn’t mind adding to our stable of daily riders and long-distance tourers.