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Jensen Beeler

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Tip: Don’t Break Your ADV Bike in Your Teaser Video

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For reasons we haven’t fully been able to understand, there has been a lot buzz lately about the new Himalayan model from Royal Enfield, the Indian company’s foray into the ADV market.

The premise might seem obvious enough, a small-displacement (410cc) adventure-tourer that is supposed to be cheap, rugged, and easy to work on.

There has always been a trade-off to make in buying a Royal Enfield though, with the “unique” charm of owning a motorcycle from the historic brand having to be balanced against its less than stellar reputation for quality and reliability.

While the idea of a simpler and easier adventure-tourer is certainly appealing to a demographic that is like to have to make repairs on the side of some single-track trail, it just seems you are just as likely to be making those repairs because something on the bike broke for no good reason. There’s a chicken and the egg thing going on somewhere here with this logic.

That being said, if you’re a brand that is try to tackle that very problem, it would probably be best not to show your rough and tumble ADV bike breaking when it is used on a modest of jump. Skip to 1:51 in the video, after the jump, and look for the right footpeg coming off during landing. Hrrm.

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Bikes

Gone Riding: 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800

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It’s a busy time in the Asphalt & Rubber office, with the entire motorcycle industry deciding that January/February is the perfect time to host events. As such, we should have a flurry of reviews, interviews, and other articles from these events posting to the site over the next few weeks.

For me, this starts two weeks on the road, with my first top near Malaga, Spain for the 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800 launch – the day’s route see us riding the new Brutale 800 near the Mediterranean Sea today, putting about 150km on the bike.

Things are already off to an interesting start, as we woke up to a sizable earthquake, whose epicenter was just on the other side of the sea, 11km off the coast of Morocco. Hopefully that’s not a bad omen for my fellow riders, though for me it felt like being back in California.

Enough of all that, the purpose of this post is to field questions about the 2016 MV Agusta Brutale 800 from A&R readers, which I can answer in the comments section. If I don’t know an answer, I will try to get a response from the MV Agusta personnel that are here with me in Spain.

You can follow our thoughts on the bike live via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also try searching for the hashtags: #Brutale800 for the thoughts of our colleagues as well.

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Bikes

The Motul Onirika 2853 Concept Is Not Your Typical MV

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Another tasty item from the 2016 Motor Bike Expo in Verona, the Motul Onirika 2853 concept builds upon a different Italian sport bike, the MV Agusta Brutale 800.

Commissioned by the Italian arm of the French lubricant manufacturer Motul, the Motul Onirika 2853 was designed and built by Luca Pozzato at Officine GPDesign.

The name “Onirika 2853” takes some deciphering, as it refers to dreaming or imagining of what the Motul brand will look like a millennia after the company’s founding (1853). At least, that’s how Motul explains it…we will have to take their word for it.

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Bikes

Ducati draXter Concept Debuts in Verona

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Ducati is at this year’s Motor Bike Expo in Verona, and it has a bevy of concepts and customs it wants to show the world. The Italian brand’s trio of Sixty2 Scrambler concepts didn’t really spark our engine, but the Ducati draXter Concept is certainly of note and worthy of further scrutiny.

The Ducati XDiavel was Bologna’s big reveal at EICMA this year, and while the cruiser model wasn’t our cup of tea, we might have to change our tune with this decked-out version of the machine.

Ducati says that the draXter model interprets the XDiavel from a “sports” point-of-view, and the modifications made to the machine certainly do a good job of connoting a bike that leaps from the line.

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News

Crunching the Numbers of BMW’s Record Sales Year

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BMW Motorrad set another record year of sales in 2015, seemingly along with all the European motorcycle manufacturers (Husqvarna, Ducati, & KTM). BMW quotes that 136,963 motorcycles and maxi-scooters were sold last year, and thankfully the Bavarian brand is fairly forthright with its sales data.

This allows us to make some interesting points of observation about BMW Motorrad, the most potent of which is the brand’s success in the sport bike market, which accounts for 16% of all BMW motorcycles sold last year.

Equally interesting is the fact that BMW’s boxer-engine machines, the R-Series, accounts for over half of BMW Motorrad’s sales (see the chart above) – a strong signal to the power of BMW’s iconic past.

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MotoGP

Paddock Pass Podcast – Episode 15 – Listener Questions

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Filling the lull of the motorcycle racing off-season, Episode 15 of the Paddock Pass Podcast sees David, Steve, and Neil answering listener questions that were submitted via Twitter.

The guys cover everything from what rider apparel they have bought (and what happens when you show up to a media scrum wearing them), to how World Superbike will handle a two-day race schedule, and much much more. We think you will find the show highly amusing. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions!

As always, be sure to follow the Paddock Pass Podcast on Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to the show on iTunes and SoundCloud – we even have an RSS feed for you. If you like the show, we would really appreciate you giving it a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

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News

Husqvarna Has Another Year of Record Sales

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In case you missed it, KTM as a company is doing extremely well, selling over 180,000 units last year. KTM the company now has two brand of motorcycles under its roof though: its namesake, and then also the Swedish brand of Husqvarna.

The latest report from Mattighofen suggests that the sales success of KTM isn’t due solely to the KTM brand, and that Husqvarna had a very strong 2015 as well.

As such, Husqvarna is reporting that it sold 21,513 units in 2015, an increase of 31% over last year’s figure of 16,337. This means that 2015 was another record for Husqvarna, the best in the company’s 112 year history.

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Dirt

2016 AMA Supermoto Championship Calendar Released

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Now in its third year of racing, since its revival, the AMA has released the 2016 AMA Supermoto Championship calendar.

For this year’s racing, American supermoto racers will have six events to test their mettle, most of which take place in the Western half of the United States, though there is one round in Quebec City, to keep the Canucks at bay.

Perhaps most importantly though, the AMA Supermoto Championship will return to television, as the series has inked a TV package with MAVTV Motorsports Networks. The TV package includes six episodes, with 12 airings, which will be produced by Greg White.

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Racing

Guy Martin Will Not Race in the 2016 Isle of Man TT

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The world’s favorite road racer will not be at the 2016 Isle of Man TT, nor at the North West 200, as Guy Martin says he will be missing those events on this year’s calendar. Instead, Guy Martin will take to a different kind of road bike, cycling in the Tour Divide race through North America.

There has been rumor for some time about Martin forgoing the TT for quite some time now, and there has even been talk of the Lincolnshire man hanging up his leathers entirely.

The latter doesn’t seem to be the case, but Martin does seem to be drifting away from the Isle of Man TT – an event he has never won a race at, though he has come close.

“I’m not done with motorbikes and if I race on the roads again this year it will be with the TAS team,” said Guy Martin, talking with the Isle of Man TT website. “The BMW bikes are mega and the team are spot on.”

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Dirt

KTM Made Over €1 Billion in Revenue in 2015

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To put it succinctly, KTM is crushing it. In 2015, the Austrian company posted another banner year, which is nothing terribly new from a European motorcycle brand; but in just a few five short years, KTM has addd over 100,000 motorcycles to its volume of production.

As such, the Austrians sold 180,801 KTM and Husqvarna motorcycles in 2015, making €1.02 billion in the process. This is a 14% increase over KTM’s sales in 2014, a 18% increase in revenue, and a 26% in income (€95 million, EBIT).

This also makes 2015 the first time that KTM has exceeded a billion euros in revenue, and the fifth year in a row that KTM sales have increased.

According to KTM, this makes them the fastest growing motorcycle company in the world.

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Bikes

The 2016 Yamaha YZF-R1 Is Ready for WSBK Duty

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Yamaha is headed back to the World Superbike paddock, and it is not taking any half-measures in doing so. As such, the Japanese manufacturer has retained the talents of Sylvain Guintoli (World Superbike Champion, 2014) and Alex Lowes (British Superbike Champion, 2013), with the highly regarded Crescent Racing running the factory-backed team.

Officially debuting the team today in Spain, along with Yamaha’s other racing programs, the Pata Yamaha Official WorldSBK Team should be a potent package for the pinnacle of production motorcycle racing, and we expect strong results from them, right off the bat.

This is because the new Yamaha YZF-R1 had an entire year of honing at the national level, where in the USA it won both the Superbike and Superstock 1000 classes in the MotoAmerica racing series, and in the UK Josh Brookes took the BSB Championship victory as well.

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