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Claudio Castiglioni Purchase of MV Agusta Imminent

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UPDATE: The deal is now done, with Harley-Davidson issuing a press release.

Expected to be closed within hours, Harley-Davidson is on the verge of selling MV Agusta to Claudio Castiglioni. Castiglioni was able to leverage the purchase of MV Agusta by using the funds that would have been generated by his stock buy-out, which is rumored to be between €20 – €30 million. Castiglioni is today’s big winner in the deal, as the Italian is basically buying back the company he sold to Harley-Davidson for pennies on the dollar, while Harley-Davidson is left holding the tab on a hefty purchase price and cash infusion into the Italian company.

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News

Zero Motorcycles Amassing a War Chest of Money

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Zero Motorcycles has secured a $900,000 grant from the California Energy Commission for the company to begin development of a new advanced compact electric powertrain. The city of Santa Cruz is matching the grant with an additional $900,000; and with other contributions, Zero has raised a total of $1.84 million dollars. This figure would seem to be in addition to the $5.5 million the company raised earlier in the year. The powertrain Zero is developing is rumored to have multiple speeds, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it was water-cooled.

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Banter

Video: Introducing Ernie, Jason, Eric, & Nick

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As our tipster noted in his email, we’re not really into stunting that much here at the A&R office. However, we are big fans of awesome, and this video of Icon sponsored stunt riders Ernie Vigil, Jason Britton, Eric Hoenshell, and Nick Brocha during their thing has plenty of awesome in it. Great stunts, great music, great videography, Icon continues to find “win” in its ongoing video series. Keep them coming guys.

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News

Honda Sales up 28% for Q1 2010

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Honda has closed its books for the first quarter of 2010, and the company’s motorcycle, scooter, and ATV sales are up 28.2% over Q1 of 2009. Selling over 2.8 million units (compare that to Q1 2009’s 2.25 million units), Honda’s sales created $3.7 billion in net sales. Honda reported $3 billion in net sales during the same time period last year. While the Asian markets powered most of Honda’s sales, North American sales were up 11% to 60,000 units sold.

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Bikes

Roland Sands Design’s Mission 200

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Roland Sands Design has a new project in their garage that sees a modified Victory being built for ludicrous speed. Aptly named Mission 200, RSD is aiming for a modified partial streamlining (MPS) record, and a 200mph benchmark. Currently the bike features a stock Victory 106ci motor, but to reach the 200mph mark RSD plans to turbo the Victory v-twin motor out. The work done by RSD looks amazing, but will the bike go 200 miles per hour? Only time will tell. Video and photos after the jump.

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Bikes

Tom Sykes Tests the 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R WSBK

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Kawasaki is at the track again with its 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R World Superbike platform, and this time at the helm is WSBK rider Tom Sykes. Sykes, who is picking up the slack for his injured teamamte Christopher Vermeulen, isn’t sure of his chances of staying with Team Green in 2011, but was obliged to help the team develop it’s new superbike. Kawasaki has had a horrible run of things in WSBK lately, despite killing its MotoGP program. Hoping to turnaround its poor results, Kawasaki has been teasing us with its WSBK development, which of course also clues us in to how the 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R road bike will shape up. Photos and videos after the jump.

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News

Ducati to Cycle World: You’re a Bunch of Liars

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On Tuesday night we were delighted to see that American print magazine Cycle World had gotten a chance to sit down with Ducati Motor Holdings CEO Gabriele del Torchio, and talk about the future of Ducati, the upcoming power-cruiser, and of course Valentino Rossi. To our surprise, del Torchio seemingly spilled the beans about Rossi moving over to Ducati, and so we, like many other sites, jumped on the news and published it.

This article of course has surprised the folks in Bologna, who have released a statement saying that the Italian brand has not signed Rossi, and that Cycle World‘s article “misreported” the facts. This is of course Ducati saying politely that Cycle World made the quotes up, which regardless if it’s true or not, is a sizeable issue for motorcycle publications and their readers.

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Bikes

More Details on the 2011 Triumph Tiger Cub

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Triumph is right on schedule, releasing more information about its two upcoming adventure bikes. Set to have a smaller displacement than the Tiger, the 2011 Triumph Tiger Cubs will feature a long-stroke three-cylinder engine. Triumph says that the compact triple will be ideal for road and dirt use, allowing you “to do the business” (yeah, we can’t believe they said that) with the bike’s torque-on-tap power plant. Photos and video after the jump.

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Racing

Ducati CEO Confirms Rossi/Hayden for 2011

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UPDATE: Ducati has denied del Torchio’s statements in Cycle World’s article.

It’s not like we didn’t already know that Rossi had signed with Ducati, but Ducati Motor Holdings CEO Gabriele del Torchio let it slip during an interview with Cycle World magazine that both Nicky Hayden and Valentino Rossi would be riding with Ducati for 2011. This makes the first person at Ducati to go on the record about next year’s MotoGP rider line-up at the Italian company, which should send Ducatisti into a fervor, and drool marinara sauce.

Del Torchio’s exact words to Cycle World were: “Nicky is a wonderful person and a great rider. This year, he greatly contributed to improving our Desmosedici racer. Next year, he and Valentino will hone the bike to its ultimate winning potential.” Del Torchio goes on to tell Cycle World about the upcoming “Vyper/Mega Monster” bike that will debut at Milan, if you like your desmo’s go on over to Cycleworld.com and read the full article.

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Racing

John Hopkins Talks about the Differences between the Bikes in World Superbike and MotoGP

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OTT caught up with John Hopkins at the AMA Pro Racing round in Mid-Ohio, and was able to ask the injured AMA racer about the differences between the bikes found in World Superbike and MotoGP, and how those differences affect how a rider approaches riding each particular type of racing motorcycle. Hopper of course has the unique perspective of riding not only in MotoGP, and WSBK, but also in AMA Superbike as well, and thus might be the most qualified person in talking about their relative pluses and minuses. Check the video after the jump.

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Bikes

Concept: Chaparral A1 e-Racer by Oberdan Bezzi

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Italian designer Oberdan Bezzi (view our coverage here) is at it again with his pen and paper, and this time he’s set his mind to imagining a battery-powered electric motorcycle. Based off the now defunked Chaparral brand, Bezzi sees the Texan company reinventing itself and entering the electric motorcycle racing scene. The bike has a full carbon chassis, a liquid cooled motor, and great attention to aerodynamics, according to Obiboi. We can also see five removable battery packs on each side of the motorcycle, and single shock suspension used not only on the rear, but also on the front fork assembly.

Wait…we feel like we’ve seen this before…Yes, it seems Bezzi has ripped-off every detail found on the MotoCzysz E1pc, right down to the motor and controller mounting points. Of course the A1 e-Racer looks like the E1pc 1.0, with its square battery packs. Oberdan must have missed our article on the eDD where we explained that the E1pc’s chevron shaped batteries allowed for more front wheel clearance. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right Michael?

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