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BMW S1000RR Gets Updated for 2015

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Despite being five years old, the BMW S1000RR remains one of the best sport bikes you can buy on the market. This is do largely to BMW bringing a bevy of European top-tier features to the superbike, but pricing it inline with its Japanese counterparts, thus creating tremendous bang for the buck for sport bike enthusiasts.

For the 2013 model year, the Bavarians raised their game with its more exclusive BMW HP4 offering, which brought semi-active suspension into liter-bike mix. Now with the Bosch MSC cornering ABS module, BMW continues to raise the game in what was once a segment that lived solely in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Now for 2015, it seems that BMW is set to update the S1000RR, as a revised version of the bike has been spotted in Germany, sporting noticeably different bodywork and other features.

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Bikes

Photos: Here is the 2015 BMW S1000XR

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It has taken various names in the press (e.g. the BMW S1000F), but trademark applications in Germany and in the USA tell us that the Bavarians have settled on calling their new sport-tourer the BMW S1000XR — and it is debuting in just a few weeks’ time at the INTERMOT show in Cologne.

Luckily for us, a spy photographer has caught the 2015 BMW S1000XR out testing ahead of its debut, with only the badges and headlights covered in tape. While we already had a good view of the BMW S1000XR when it was testing, these photos reveal the off-the-assemblyline shape of the latest Bavarian machine, and we like what we see.

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Banter

Video: Rider Nails the Landing After a Nasty Crash

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The upside to having rampant insurance fraud with motor vehicles is the increased use of dashboard cameras, at least that’s our selfish take on the situation currently in Russia. If that’s truly the case, then the crowning achievement of that philosophy is surely the following video.

Going far too fast for the flow of traffic, our protagonist finds himself quickly cut-off by a car that is changing lanes. What happens next is entirely predictable, yet incredibly not. We don’t want to give it away, just watch it after the jump…no pun intended. Thanks for the tip Taco Ben!

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News

Kawasaki USA Rebrands “Good Times Protection Plan”

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Kawasaki USA announced today that it is rebranding its tragically named extended warranty program from the “Good Times Protection Plan” to “Kawasaki Protection Plus” for reasons we feel are too obvious to elaborate upon.

However, the real astonishing story here is that for the past 28 years, Kawasaki has made its dealers say with a straight face “Good Times Protection Plan” to would-be buyers, who were looking for more protection for…umm…what was between their legs.

Ahh, I remember in college when I had a “good times protection plan” — though you either had to buy a pack at the grocery store, or suffer through the line at Student Health to get them for free. That and other penis jokes await you in the comments section. Don’t plan on seeing Kawasaki advertise on A&R anytime soon after this.

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WSBK

Bimota Fails to Meet Homologation Quotas, Out of WSBK?

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Despite the small size of the company, Bimota has shown itself to be a strong contender in the EVO class of the World Superbike Championship. And though none of the company’s results have counted to date, as the Italian brand had failed to meet the initial 125 quota by the start of the 2014 season, Bimota has kept forging ahead.

This is because Bimota got a special dispensation to race the first part of the 2014 WSBK season, as the FIM allowed the company four months from its first race day to meet World Superbike’s initial homologation standards, which is 125 street bikes.

Unfortunately however, even with that extra time, Bimota has been unable to meet the 125 unit volume (only 40 or so machines have been built), and thus is not expected to continue racing the rest of the season.

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Bikes

More Renders of the Bottpower BOTT XC1 Café Racer

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Forget the Honda CB350 or the old BMW R-Series machines, this is a proper modern café racer. We have brought you the work of Bottpower before, and have even already shown you renders of the BOTT XC1, but the firm has made another twist on its Buell-powered café.

Adding a half-fairing to the front, and reworking the fuel tank and tail into a more modern shapes, this variant of the BOTT XC1 draws from both newer and older thoughts for inspiration. And if your tastes vary day-to-day, Version 3, as it’s being called, can still be easily turned into the BOTT XR1 street track machine, as most of the changes are only skin deep.

Since Bottpower makes bikes to each customer’s personal spec and taste, we imagine we could see all three variants, and more, roaming the streets…or even hitting the track. Looking good fellas!

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Bikes

This Isn’t the 2015 KTM 390 Adventure, But It Is Coming

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The autumn trade shows, INTERMOT and EICMA, are nearly upon us, and that means a plethora of new bikes are just weeks away from being unveiled to the public.

Some of the bikes we have seen coming for some time now, like the Ducati Scrambler and BMW S1000F (or whatever BMW plans on calling it); other bikes we have only just learned about, like the Yamaha TDM-09 (as the press is calling it) and the Suzuki GSX-S1000; and then there are the motorcycles we can only speculate about.

However, no machine has been more leaked, rumored, and anticipated than the KTM 390 Adventure. Like its sport bike counterpart, the KTM RC390, the smaller adventure bike is built around the KTM 390 Duke platform.

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