Here is your first look at the 2016 Honda CB500F, which like its other Honda brethren, will get a bit of makeover for next year. American Honda is teasing the new model now, but says it won’t release more information until the EICMA show in Milan, on November 17th.
We don’t think Honda will stray too far from the current Honda CB500F, with most of the modifications being cosmetic refinements that enhance the street-standard’s appeal to riders.
It went all the way down to the final race of the season – in many ways the final lap of the final race – but now the 2015 MotoGP Championship season is over, and Jorge Lorenzo is the 2015 FIM MotoGP World Champion.
You have to consider 2015 as a tumultuous season for the Movistar Yamaha rider, as Lorenzo’s season only came into its own in the latter stages of the championship. But, the Spaniard was arguably the fastest rider of the season, carrying not only the momentum but also the most race wins to the end of the season.
This year certainly wasn’t Lorenzo’s most dominant win, with a slew of equipment issues plaguing the Spaniard, which added to him chasing teammate Valentino Rossi all the way into the Valencia GP, but 2015 was certainly Lorenzo’s most hard-fought season.
After the dust settles on the “Sepang Clash” we think even fanatical Rossi fans will have to agree that Lorenzo is a worthy world champion with his on-track performances – we just don’t expect them to come to that conclusion right away.
Earlier this year we showed you the Honda CRF250 Rally concept, the 250cc production equivalent to Honda’s rally raid competition machine, the Honda CRF450 Rally.
That machine appears ready to move from concept to reality, as Honda has trademarked the name in both Europe and the USA, and we expect to see the lightweight adventure bike drop, sooner rather than later.
We have been talking a lot lately about the Yamaha MWT-9, the three-wheel leaning FZ-09 concept that debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show; and we have also talked a bit about the Yamaha “Sports Ride” concept, a sport car that Yamaha was also showing off in Tokyo.
So hoping to leave no stone unturned, Yamaha has created something that takes from the highlights of both of those concepts – the Japanese call it the Yamaha OR2T, a four-wheel leaning motorcycle…thing.
The Yamaha OR2T is about as close to the Yamaha Tesseract, which debuted in 2007, that we have seen in the living flesh; and honestly, it looks pretty damn awesome.
We got out first look at the KTM RC16 last week, the Austrian company’s MotoGP race bike that will debut in 2017, along with a customer version that will cost around €140,000.
The RC16 draws some serious inspiration from the Honda RC213V, with its whale-shark air intake design, underbraced swingarm, 90° V4 engine with a “screamer” piston firing order. There are of course obvious differences, with the KTM RC16 having steel trellis frame, WP suspension pieces, and 17″ wheels.
Alex Hofmann took the reigns of the KTM RC16 at its three-day shakedown test at the Red Bull Ring, but soon development duties will be handed over to former-MotoGP rider Mika Kallio, with a second test that is scheduled for this year.
Italian magazine Motociclismo has what it says are the first spy shots of the rumored Ducati Scrambler 400, the small-displacement sibling to the current Ducati Scrambler.
While normally it is easy to distinguish a new motorcycle model when it’s on the street, the photos from Motociclismo offer us little insight into how the Scrambler 400 is different from its 803cc kin. Checkout the photos on Motociclismo.it, and you will see what we mean.
This would suggest that we can expect to see a very familiar looking motorcycle make its debut at EICMA in two weeks’ time, with the most noticeable different being the Scrambler 400’s lack of upside-down forks.
Benelli is very much the forgotten Italian marque in the motorcycle industry, with Ducati, MV Agusta, and Aprilia (in that order, perhaps) taking most of the attention when it comes to motorcycle that hail from a country shaped like a boot.
The brand has made some fantastic modern models, like the Tornado, TnT, and Tre, and of course Benelli is steeped in a rich history that has some classic motorcycles. Those are the elements that have always attracted us to the brand, and what keeps us longing for more from Benelli.
However, ownership under the Qianjiang Group has proved difficult for motorcycle enthusiasts, with the company’s sexy Italian-designed motorcycles giving way to practical simple people movers. The Benelli TnT25 proves that point.
It seems though that things are slowly coming around for Benelli and its Chinese owners though, with the Italian-born brand sending the above teaser with the message “The Legend is back…” So we dug a little deeper.
The 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R might just be an “update” to the WSBK Championship winning superbike, but Team Green has put enough new tech and features into the machine to get us pretty excited about its debut.
Boasting a revised chassis and motor, more electronics, more aerodynamic fairings, Kawasaki not only surprised us, and the rest of the motorcycle media, with its the midlife model refresh, but we think Kawasaki surprised even themselves with the machine, making a bike that potential-R1 buyers will definitely have to consider when they make a trip down to their local dealership.
Team Green has changed so much on the 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R that we will let them list all the changes in the video, after the jump. If you can get past the techno music and hyperbole, it is actually pretty interesting.
This is probably the episode you all have been waiting for from the Paddock Pass Podcast, the guys’ perspective on the Phillip Island and Sepang rounds. On-hand for the chat are the usual suspects: David Emmett, Neil Morrison, Tony Goldsmith, as well as special guest Jensen Beeler (hey that’s me!).
The show is a bit longer than usual, but as you can imagine catching up with two MotoGP rounds and having to hash out the entire Sepang Clash fiasco is a bit of an undertaking. What does the future hold for Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez, and Jorge Lorenzo? Tune in to find out, with the embedded player found after the jump.
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