We have a strange love affair with motorcycle pit stops here at Asphalt & Rubber. Maybe it’s the added spectacle…
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that with the debut of the Ducati Monster 1200, that another liquid-cooled Monster was around the corner, to fill in the middleweight segment. With Ducati already having the 821cc Testastretta 11° engine in the Hypermotard line, that engine will get double-duty with the 2015 Ducati Monster 800. Spotted by the BikeSocial website run by Bennetts, an insurance company in the UK, we get our first glimpse of the Monster 800 in the wild. Visually the 821cc machine is almost identical to its 1,200cc counterpart, but the new Monster clearly has a double-sided swingarm holding onto its rear tire.
Stop what you’re doing for the next 18 minutes — just stop right now. Take a ride with Michael Dunlop…
The Suzuki V-Strom 1000 is perhaps the most intriguing motorcycle to come from Hamamatsu in a long while, as the Japanese brand has been dormant ever since the economic dustup of 2009 and onward. A revival of new motorcycles from Suzuki, the V-Strom 1000 also represents the OEM finally building a proper offering for the ADV segment. Building upon the V-Strom 1000, our friend Luca Bar imagines new life coming into Suzuki because of the adventure-tourer, and it isn’t hard to imagine other new machines from the V-Strom’s platform. For a product line that is full of holes, one such plug could be the revival of the Suzuki SV1000 series, and Bar has put together both a naked and half-fairing editions of this well-loved model.
Yamaha is trickling out its Thailand-built models, and while we wait for the debut of the Yamaha YZF-R25 250cc sport…
It is a brave new world when it comes to the internet and motorcycle companies, and I have no problem…