The Honda Grom is a motorcycle I cannot explain. I don’t know why Honda built it; I don’t know who that bike is for; and I don’t know where you would actually ride a Grom…I just know that I want one.
Interestingly, the Honda Grom shares an ancestry with the Honda Monkey lineup – a series of small-displacement, and curiously sized, Z-series motorcycles from the 1960s and 1970s.
Now paying homage to the Monkeys of yore, Honda has one last concept from the Tokyo Motor Show that we need to cover: the obviously named Honda Monkey 125 concept.
Jordi Torres is one the big personalities in the World Superbike Championship, and he has done well this season on the Althea BMW S1000RR. For the 2018 season though, Torres – that’s “Spanish Elvis” to his fans – will be on a factory bike, getting a ride with MV Agusta Reparto Corse.
Torres will have big boots to fill at MV Agusta, as Leon Camier has impressed in recent seasons, putting the MV Agusta F4 RC into points positions no one thought possible. Camier leaves MV Agusta, for greener pastures at the Red Bull Honda WorldSBK team.
BMW Motorrad is set to debut four new motorcycles at this year’s EICMA show, and surely one of those news machines will be the BMW F850GS.
How do we know this? Well, BMW was pretty obvious about the new model in its latest teaser video (watch it, after the jump). It also helps that the revised middleweight ADV bike has been caught numerous times by spy photographer.
Also helping this conjecture is the fact that the BMW F800GS was last updated for the 2013 model year, with a visual refresh for the 2016 model year. As such, the model is due for an overhaul.
Expected to have a bit more punch than the outgoing F800GS, the 2018 BMW F850GS should provide a bit more stratification in BMW’s adventure-touring range, which gets a bit confusing when you get to the models below the venerable BMW R1200GS.
The 2017 EICMA show is rapidly approaching, and if history is any indication, leaks of the motorcycles from Italy will start dropping any day now. Sooner, if we have our say in it.
As the motorcycle industry gears up for the largest show of the year, we thought we would put together an exhaustive list of everything we expect to see at EICMA.
It goes without saying of course, be sure to stay tuned into our up-to-the-minute coverage of the EICMA show, as we will be bringing you the first glimpses and details of all the machines that will be coming for the 2018 model year, and beyond.
Victory may be a defunct brand now, but Polaris still has an obligation to Victory owners for warranties and recalls, and as such we have some recall news for you today – to the tune of 26,182 Victory motorcycles being recalled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The recall affects a swath of models from the American manufacturer: the Victory Cross Country, Cross Country Tour, Cross Roads, Magnum, and Hard Ball – from the 2010 to 2017 model yeas – all of which are affected by engine misfires that may melt the rear brake line and wiring.
The FIM today released the provisional 2018 WorldSBK version. Just as last year, the schedule contains thirteen rounds, spread out from February to late October.
Two circuits visited in 2017 are out, Jerez and the Lausitzring, while Brno makes a return to the WorldSBK schedule, and a brand new circuit in the west of Argentina, near the border with Chile.
The schedule starts as ever at Phillip Island in Australia on 25th February, with the WorldSBK and WorldSSP classes competing. As is traditional, the race is preceded a couple of days earlier by a two-day official test.
The start of the series is once again rather fragmented, however, as WorldSBK fans will have to wait four weeks for the second round of the series at the Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Thailand.
The KTM 1290 Adventure S seems finally set to come to the United States, after debuting last year at the EICMA show. Ever-tentative about new model releases, KTM North American only brought in the KTM 1290 Adventure R this year, leaving its road-focused ADV counterpart for the rest of the world.
First spotted in filings with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) by the folks at Motorcycle.com, it looks like the KTM 1290 Adventure S has proven its worth abroad, enough so that KTM feels comfortable bringing it into the largest ADV market in the world.
As such, this news surely means that the 2018 KTM 1290 Adventure S is coming to the USA. It features cast wheels (19″/17″), cornering ABS, semi-active WP Suspension pieces, and 158hp of fun on tap.
Suzuki Motor America today sent our first view of the 2018 Suzuki GSX-R600, 2018 Suzuki GSX-R750, and 2018 Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycles – now before you get too excited, they are exactly the same as last year’s models (save for some bold new graphics).
This is of course all according to plan. We have already written about Suzuki’s plan to bring new middleweight GSX-R600 & GSX-R750 sport bikes to market, as well as a new Hayabusa.
As such, we expect still to see new sport bike models debuting from Suzuki at this year’s EICMA show in Milan, and all three bikes should arrive mid-2018, as 2019 model year machines.
