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Rumors of a Honda CB1100X Are Heating Up…And They Look Good

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When we first saw the Honda CB4X concept at EICMA last year, we fell in love at first sight. Honda Motor Europe has a history of making intriguing concept designs, and the CB650 platform lends itself to some beautiful options.

With the reception that the CB4X received, it seemed likely that Honda would bring the bike to market, and fuel was added to that fire when Big Red filed for intellectual property protections for the concept’s design.

Now, we get some hope from Japan (thanks to the folks at AutoBy) for the future of the Honda CB4X, though the bike has taken a turn in its evolution.

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MV Agusta Teases New “Alpine” Model for Next Week

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A curious email graced our inbox, as it seems that MV Agusta is teasing a new model that will debut this time next week.

The bike is called the “Alpine” and it features a fetching blue and grey color pairing, we don’t know too much about this machine, but the name and logo provide some hints, since they are from Automobiles Alpine.

This would suggest to us that MV Agusta has another super-exclusive model cooking, similar to what we saw with the MV Agusta F4Z collaboration with Zagato.

What kind of bike this will be though is anyone’s guess.

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Ducati Begins Teasing New V4 Engine – The Multistrada V4 Cometh

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Ducati has begun officially teasing a new V4 engine platform on its website and social media channels – a move that is almost certainly the beginning of an unveiling for the Ducati Multistrada V4 adventure-touring motorcycle (the two off-road / on-road panels are a bit of a giveaway, shown above).

That a V4 version of the Multistrada was coming has been known for quite some time, with even Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali acknowledging that we would see the new model by the end of this year.

So that news, coupled to a bevy of spy photos that have caught the machine testing in its pre-production form, give us a good idea what to expect about this new model.

Still, there are some details we do not know about the Multistrada V4, and Ducati seems intent on teasing out those details in the coming weeks, via various “theorems” it is postulating. 

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Aprilia Is Working on a 300cc/400cc Class Sport Bike

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By the end of this year, Aprilia will finally bring its new two-cylinder platform to reality, putting the Aprilia RS660 (pictured above) on dealership floors.

This full-faired sport bike will be joined in early 2021 by the Aprilia Tuono 660, and from there we can expect at least one more model from this parallel-twin platform.

But what about something on the smaller end of the scale? There is an obvious hole in Aprilia’s lineup when it comes to the 300cc/400cc segment. That might be set to change, however.

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The Four-Cylinder Yamaha YZF-R25 Rumors Have Begun

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I guess this was bound to happen once we saw the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R become a real thing, as we are starting to hear murmurings that Yamaha may follow suit with a four-cylinder variant of its 250cc sport bike offering.

The rumor comes to us from Indonesia, with local site Iwanbanaran the first to report the story. Since then, the rumor has done the rounds in Europe, and now is making its way to North America.

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Report: Kawasaki Ninja ZX-25R Makes 40hp+ at the Wheel

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It is a little strange that Kawasaki has yet to release any specifics about the Ninja ZX-25R model, especially when markets around the world are gearing up for their order and delivery. After all, customers need to know what they are buying.

One of the key pieces of missing data, what everyone is anxious to know, is how much power this quarter-sized four-cylinder engine can produce, as it screams its way to 17,000 rpm.

We seem to have that answer today though, albeit unofficially, as a report is quoting a dyno run that saw 41.4hp at 15,350rpm and a peak torque output of 15.3 lbs•ft (20.8 Nm) at 12,700rpm.

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Is Honda About to Drop Alex Marquez for Pol Espargaro

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For the past 24 hours, the internet has been blowing up over multiple reports that HRC is about to drop Alex Marquez from its factory MotoGP team, and replace him with Pol Espargaro in the Repsol Honda squad.

The news has been covered by Sky Sport Italia, Autosport, Motorsport, and The Race, and those reports have led to an interesting rebuke (of sorts) on by HRC’s Alberto Puig on the MotoGP.com website.

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Is Kawasaki About to Bring Back the GPZ900R?

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For 20 years, Team Green brought the Kawasaki GPZ900R to motorcyclists around the word, giving eager two-wheeled fans a potent street bike, which would eventually launch the “Ninja” name and help create the sport bike segment.

The unofficial star of the movie Top Gun, the Kawasaki GPZ900R was made famous by the Hollywood hit and actor Tom Cruise, and now with a sequel set for 2020, this iconic motorcycle could be making a return as well.

That is the rumor from Japan, at least, which is being fueled by a curious video posted by Kawasaki, which shows the evolution of the GPZ900R over the years – spoiler alert: not much changed in its 20-year run.

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Further Proof We Won’t See a Ducati Multistrada V4 This Year

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There has been a bit of back and forth on internet rumors regarding when the so-called Ducati Multistrada V4 would debut, and now we have another piece to that puzzle.

While we know that we will see the new Streetfighter V4 debut at Ducati’s unveiling event in October, it is less clear if the Italian brand will also debuted a V4-powered ADV bike.

The eagle-eyes at Moto.it though have seen EPA filings for a 2020 Ducati Multistrada 1260 GT, which doesn’t seem like a big deal on its face (the model generally just adds items from the Ducati Performance catalog to the Multistrada model), but it does suggest some interesting things.

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Is A More Rad Version of the Suzuki Katana Coming?

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The Suzuki Katana isn’t even officially out yet for the US market, and already there are rumors of an up-spec version of the classic-inspired sport bike coming from Japan.

The news centers around Suzuki wanting the Katana to compete better with the high-performance naked models already on the market, namely the Aprilia Tuono V4 1100, Ducati Streetfighter V4, KTM 1290 Super Duke R, et al.

The move then is an “R” spec machine, rumored to see its 999cc four-cylinder engine bumped out to 1,135cc. Other go-fast parts are likely to be included (read: brakes, suspension, wheels, etc), and perhaps some updates to the styling to make it more aggressive looking.

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Is Marco Melandri Set to Retire from Motorcycle Racing?

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I am not sure about this one, but the word out of Italy is that Marco Melandri is set this week to announce his retirement from motorcycle racing. Naturally, we are intrigued.

The rumor comes from La Gazzetta dello Sport (the same publication that’s also currently saying – quite dubiously, we might add – that this will be Jorge Lorenzo’s last season racing in MotoGP), and now the sports magazine suggests that Melandri is ready to hang up his leathers after a tough year back in WorldSBK.

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