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Jensen Beeler

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Finally putting an end to the speculation, Team San Carlo Honda Gresini has confirmed that the satellite Honda MotoGP team will field a claiming rule team (CRT) entry for the 2012 season. Using a Honda CBR1000RR motor with a custom chassis built by FTR Moto (the same firm linked to Ducati’s twin-spar aluminum frame), Gresini becomes the latest MotoGP to jump on the growing CRT bandwagon.

The move means San Carlo Honda Gresini will field a hybrid garage for next season, with Álvaro Bautista on satellite-spec Honda RC213V bike, and a yet unnamed rider on the CRT racing machine. With a high-profile satellite team like Gresini adding a CRT bike to its format, the news adds yet more validation to the CRT movement.

In the US, you’d be hard pressed to hear someone say that scooters are for the cool kids. The Diet-Coke of motorcycling, scooters get a bum wrap in the two-wheeled world because of their low horsepower, walk-through seat, and their snooze-fest urban practicality. Despite being the perfect way to get around a city like San Francisco, riders looking to make more of a statement usually opt for something along a different train of thought. Ask around your local bike night, and you’ll hear that scooters are only good for new riders, girls, or men who wear pants so tight you can tell their religion.

Well, if that’s been your experience too, then you probably don’t know Boulon. A product of the south of France, Boulon certainly knows how to make scooters look hip (is that the word kids are using these days?) as he shreds this skatepark on his personal transportation device. A well-shot video of some hooligan fun, our only complaint would be the lack of a helmet. Come on Boulon, you have to set an example for the children. Video after the jump.

After a brief stint in MotoGP riding for the ill-fated factory Kawasaki squad (you do remember when Kawasaki raced in MotoGP, right?), Anthony West found himself demoted back into GP racing’s middle class, riding in Moto2 with the MZ team. Now getting a chance back in the big show, Ant West will make his MotoGP return riding a CRT bike with the Speed Master team for the 2012 MotoGP Championship.

With CRT entries being comprised of both a production motor and custom chassis, there is a tremendous amount of intrigue regarding what combinations teams will field, and acording to our friends at MotoMatters, West will likely be riding an FTR chassis with either a Honda or Aprilia motor in it.

Loyal readers to Asphalt & Rubber should know by now that on semi-regular basis I like to lambast motorcycle companies, both individually and as a whole, for they’re dismal understanding of what often gets referred to as “new media” (the fact that such a title is applied to a medium that has been in commercial form for over two decades should shed some insight on the situation I’m dealing with here). Now often this tradition of mine revolves around pointing out some of the gems of imagination that emanate from our industry, which in turn leads to me saying things that result in A&R being uninvited to future events held by the company in question. C’est la vie.

Of course if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. So in the interest of trying to make the world a better place, I’ll offer these three videos by KTM as examples to the companies that have received my ire, and suggest that if you need some inspiration on how put together a rich and compelling video media campaign for a motorcycle you’ve recently launched, then compare and contrast the following with your own work-product in order to highlight your deficiencies.

Lastly, a couple points to ponder. If motorcycles are an aspirational purchase, then put some aspiration into your message. If motorcycles are an expression of individuality, then make sure your bike’s identity shines through. If motorcycles are supposed to be a form of recreation, then better damn well be grinning ear-to-ear after you are done. Videos after the jump.

Making its debut at the 2011 EICMA show, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard is the boutique Italian motorcycle firm’s latest creation. Borrowing from the Bimota DB6’s frame design, the DB 10 Bimotard takes the same 1,078cc air-cooled two-valve Hypermotard 1100 EVO motor, with its 95hp peak power output, and builds around this platform a compelling maxi-motard design. Perhaps better labelled as Bimota’s take on building a better Hypermotard, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard also promises the usual Bimota design and exclusivity, and helps bridge the gap to the Italian company’s latest off-road offerings, which are amazingly less-compelling, vanilla, and not going to grace the pages of A&R.

Carbon fiber, Marzocchi suspension, Marchesini wheels, Brembo brakes, and Zard exhaust…all the usual suspects are present on this cleverly portmanteau-named Bimotard. The fit and finish in person is what you’d expect from Bimota: flawless. A part of me says that you have to praise the small Italian company for breaking from its recent tradition of glorified street-naked motorcycles a bit, and offering a motorcycle with a slightly different ethos. That being said, the Bimota DB10 Bimotard isn’t really that huge of a departure from the DB5, DB6, and DB8s that came before it. A Bimota DB6 with different clothes on, the DB10 is really more evolution than revolution, but it still manages to please us…just not wow us. No price yet, but “cheap” is a four-letter word here.

Walking around the halls of the 2011 EICMA show, I saw this concept for an MV Agusta tourer sitting in the Motociclismo booth, and wondered what was the story behind the bike. Luckily the internet has answers for such questions, and it turns out that the MV Agusta Tricruiser is the brainchild of students at Istituto Europeo di Design of Turin (IED).

Using the MV Agusta F3 as a starting point, the graduate students at IED set out to envision the next iteration in MV Agusta’s smaller-displacement platform. With the Italian company under tremendous pressure to become profitable, MV Agusta must increase its volume by a factor greater than 10x if it wants to see blank ink on its balance sheet.

Accordingly, the company from Varese has been making a bevy of variations of its F4-based models, showing three new Brutale street-nakeds at EICMA (Brutale 920, Brutale R 1090, & Brutale RR 1090) at ECIMA, along with two F4 superbikes (F4R & F4RR).

Slotting in a smaller-displacement and cheaper-price point model series that is based off a 675cc three-cylinder motor, MV Agusta also showed its F3 supersport and its corresponding Brutale 675 street-naked at EIMCA this year. While compelling pieces, MV Agusta will surely need more models in its arsenal if it wants to achieve its financial goals, and the next MV Agusta is heavily rumored to be a sport-touring/adventure model.

Some chatter was created when the provisional 2012 Isle of Man TT calendar was published and the TT Zero electric motorcycle race was absent from the listing. Putting the “provisional” in provisional calendar, our sources close to the Isle of Man TT belayed any fears that the TT Zero race was cancelled from the TT. Now confirming the news we already published, the Isle of Man TT has formally announced that the TT Zero race will return for the 2012 schedule, along with the £10,000 bounty for the first bike to average 100mph over the course.

The Ducati 1199 Panigale is surely going to be the bike of 2012. Not because the flagship Ducati packs a 195hp Superquadro motor into a wet 414 lbs bulk (thought that certainly helps in the sport bike genre), but because the Panigale brings so many revolutionary technical and design aspects to the business of production motorcycles. Electronically adjustable suspension, LED headlights, GPS assisted DDA+ data acquisition, traction control, ABS, engine braking control…the Ducati 1199 Panigle’s feature-set is like reading the wish list of any superbike enthusiast. However what makes the 2012 Ducati 1199 Panigale truly special is its revolutionary monocoque frame.

The gamble has bit the Italian company in the ass in MotoGP, but on the production-side of the equation, the Ducati 1199 Panigale could very well prove the gamble was worth taking. We here at Asphalt & Rubber have been reserving our judgment on Ducati’s new frame design until we can get the Panigale in our hands and on a track, but when that day finally comes, we really hope what we get to swing a leg over is a Ducati 1199 Panigale in Superstock trim with Ducati Performance pieces.

If you’re a track day enthusiast with some Italian leanings, you may not want to click past this point — at the very least, take precautions by hiding your wallet. With all the two-wheeld porno after the jump, get ready to be uncomfortable while sitting down. And just remember, “baseball, baseball, baseball.”

If you ever wanted proof that alleged “spy photos” of motorcycles were complete bullshit, then we submit to you this latest news about BMW’s use of QR codes on camouflaged test mules. Embracing the process of teasing prototype as the marketing exercise that it is, BWM Motorrad has begun tagging its test bikes with large QR codes the passersby can capture, and thus find out more information about the under-wraps model they just witnessed.

In giving up the whole spy photo farce, BMW gains perhaps a little bit of credibility in the process (not really), but more importantly the German company has found a way to heist some free advertising out of unsuspecting motorcycle publications. After all, any publication running a photo of a bike with a QR code on it is also therefore also running an interactive ad that enables readers to go to an OEM-managed website. Clever.

We’re big fans of Daniel Simon’s work here at Asphalt & Rubber, especially his Cosmic Motors series. Stocked with some of the most imaginative illustrations of vehicles from an alternate reality, Simon’s two-wheeled pièce de résistance is the Cosmic Motors Detonator motorcycle.

For reasons that probably resemble our work-induced daydreams, Parker Brothers Choppers (PBC), the same firm that brought you the rideable TRON Lightcycle and Batman’s Batpod, has built a functional, albeit unlicensed, version of Simon’s Cosmic Motors Detonator. To the company’s credit though, the build overall seems fairly true to the sketches and renders done by Simon.

A mixed quarter for BMW Motorrad, as the Bavarian company has once again posted a positive sales quarter of 6.5% growth over Q3 2010, despite losing money overall in the current inclement financial weather. Selling 28,862 units in this year’s third quarter, BMW Motorrad’s sales, as usual, were primarily carried by the BMW brand, which sold 26,312 motorcycles.

Perhaps lending even further credibility to the business case for the Husqvarna Nuda 900, the Swedish motorcycle brand accounted for only 2,550 units in Q3 2011 (or just under 9% of total sales, for those keeping score). Independently, the BMW motorcycle brand was up 7.4% over last year’s same time period, while Husqvarna sales were down 1.9%. BMW & Husqvarna sold 24,493 & 2,601 units respectively during last year’s third quarter.