If you haven’t seen it by now, there is a video of Keanu Reeves making the rounds on the internet, thanks to the folks at GQ.
The video sees the famed Hollywood actor talking about his passion and love for motorcycles, as well as his involvement in the Arch Motorcycle brand.
Call it a win for motorists, as the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that in certain circumstances the marking of tires on parked vehicles with chalk amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure.
As our American readers should all know, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is protected by the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution, and here the 6th Circuit ruled in favor of an interesting argument to find that chalk marks on parked vehicles rising to this level of thinking.
The crux of the story centers around the town of Saginaw, Michigan, which has been using tire chalk to measure the time a vehicle is parked in designated parking zones.
Harley-Davidson is reporting its first-quarter results for 2019, and as you might expect, the Bar & Shield brand continues to sink with its worldwide sales figures. As such, Harley-Davidson saw sales decrease worldwide by 3.8% in Q1 2019, with US sales down 4.2% compared to the same time last year (international sales were down 3.3%).
This news continues a trend for Harley-Davidson, as it continues to see its sales figure moving downward, which is following the overall trend in the US motorcycle industry, where sales are down 4.7% in Q1 2019.
From a relative point of view, this news is perhaps not so bad for Harley-Davidson, as it outperformed the market (though it owns a considerable size of the relevant segments), and in the process of that, the American brand picked up marketshare in its home market
This is of course the business equivalent of escaping being eaten by lion, by merely out-running the person fleeing next to you.
The retirement of Nicky Hayden’s racing number at the Grand Prix of the Americas wasn’t the only tribute being done for America’s beloved motorcycle racer. This is because on stage at Ducati Island, a special tribute bike was unveiled that remembers the Italian brand’s history with the Kentucky Kid,
The special Ducati Panigale V4 is the work of the folks at MotoCorsa, and it imagines what Nicky’s Ducati MotoGP race bike would look like in street bike form.
Episode 13 of the Brap Talk podcast is now out for your two-wheeled audio pleasure, and it comes to you right after the Grand Prix of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
Shahin and I greatly enjoyed seeing and talking to so many fans of the podcast at the MotoGP race, Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, and the general Austin city limits. It really means a lot to us that you all enjoy the show so much.
As such, this show discusses the weekend for us, in particular what happened on and off the track. We gush about the MotoGP race, debate the bikes seen at the show, and generally plan where our next calories are going to come from.
It was just a month ago that we watched the MotoE paddock at Jerez burn down to the ground, torching effectively all of the bikes and material that were to be used in the all-electric series.
This was a major setback for the FIM MotoE World Cup series, and unsurprisingly the incident caused the complete revision of the series’ calendar.
The series says that single-bike provider Energica is on track to rebuild in just three months the 18 electric motorcycles that were burned in the flames. This means a new six-round calendar that starts in July in Germany, rather than Spain.
Today, we get our first indication of when we will see the MotoE bikes testing in earnest, as the FIM has announced a pre-season test at Valencia in June.
We have already brought you news that Suzuki is looking to bring a new big-displacement dual-sport to market, one that treads on the old “DR Big” name of yesteryear.
Now, we get word that the large off-road capable motorcycle has been spotted in the wild, in what appears to be Italy, which gives us our first glimpse of this rumored machine.
When we look at Aprilia’s lineup, it is surprisingly sparse. The brand has only a pair of models with its V4 engine, and another pair with its 900cc v-twin. Four bikes – that’s it.
The revised middleweights – the Shiver 900 and Dorsoduro 900 – debuted in 2017, bringing some refinements to the lackluster 750cc machines that they replaced. The 900cc bikes are not the stars in Aprilia’s lineup though, and they struggle to sell at Aprilia dealerships, but they have a tremendous amount of potential.
We say this because it always felt like Aprilia could have done more with the engine platforms available to the Italian brand. A long-travel suspension adventure-sport makes a ton of sense for the V4 platform, and today we see what could be done with the v-twin platform.
One of the highlights at the Handbuilt Show in Austin, Texas was the a custom bike built by hosts Revival Cycles, which is called the Birdcage. You may have seen the Revival Birdcage making the rounds on custom sites. It is quite striking.
The bike features a large air-cooled boxer-twin engine (more on that in minute), with a web of titanium rods welded together to make the frame and basic body outline. It is a very minimalist approach, and it is designed to showcase the giant 1,800cc engine that is at the bike’s core. There is a good reason for that too.
The purpose of the Revival Birdcage is to help tease a new motorcycle model from BMW Motorrad, which will use this giant push-rod powered lump as the basis for a proper cruiser motorcycle, which will debut in 2020.
This little tidbit at the end has seemingly been missed by many, but it is a big, big deal – both literally and figuratively.
When we first rode the Indian FTR1200 prototype motorcycle – one of our better A&R Pro stories, if I do say so myself – it was clear that the American brand was seeing this model as the first iteration from a platform of machines.
When pressed the Indian reps on whether we would see more bikes with the new v-twin engine arriving, and the answers in reply were deliciously vague, though hints of an ADV machine and other models could be read between the lines.
So, it doesn’t surprise us today that our colleagues at Motorbike Writer have gotten wind of Indian releasing two more variations of the machine, a “Street” bike in 2020, and an “Adventure” bike in 2021. Though, the story looks to have originally come from the ADV Rider web forum.
This is a very interesting proof of what we suspected, but we should say that the conclusions reached by Motorbike Writer are mostly incorrect.
For this year’s Americas GP, I made a conscious effort to get out of the confines of the media center, and to watch the on-track sessions for the MotoGP riders.
Part of this was because of all the talk about the track conditions, but the other reason is due to the fact that you can pick up on a great deal from seeing the bikes circulate in person, which is lost from the media feed.
Who is pushing hard every lap? Who is waiting for a tow, and from whom? Who looks comfortable through a particularly difficult section of the track? How do the bikes and riders compare on approach, apex, and exit? And so on.
For bonus points, I brought my camera long with me as well.