Bikes

Carbon monocoque frame, turbo-boosted v-twin motor, single-sided swingarm, duolever front suspension geometry, and premium components — that’s what French firm Boxer Design’s SuperBob is made of. You’ll either love or hate the SuperBob’s general aesthetic, but you have to admit up close, the details of the sport-naked are superb. Based around an 88° 997cc v-twin motor that was developed by French firm Technologies (the same company behind the stillborn Inmotec MotoGP project’s motor), the Boxer Design SuperBob massages its peak power output to 158hp, thanks to some light turbo work (6-9 psi).

Racing

It looks like MV Agusta will be making a “historic return” to the Isle of Man TT, as the venerable road race has announced that the factory-backed of World Performance Racing (WPR) will be entering MV Agusta F3 & F4 motorcycles in the 101st running of the Mountain Course. According to the TT, the last time an MV Agusta was raced around the TT course was in 2007, when the late Martin Finnegan finished 4th with a 125.685 mph pace in the Superstock TT race.

Racing

It comes with little surprise then that Jorge “Aspar” Martinez’s MotoGP team has announced that Randy de Puniet will be one of its two riders for the 2012 MotoGP season. De Puniet will be joined by former-MotoGP/Moto2 racer Aleix Espargaró on the two bike team. Dropping Ducati and announcing that Team Aspar will run an all CRT effort, the Spanish team will use Aprilia-powered bikes (De Puniet tested one of these bikes at Jerez last week). While a chassis manufacturer has not been announced, paddock gossip has been suggesting that Aprilia could be supplying a custom chassis.

News

We’ve featured Slovenian motorcycle stunter Rok Bagoroš and his KTM 125 Duke before, and we’ve talked at length about how the Austrian motorcycle manufacturer makes some of the best promo videos in the biz…needless to say, you can see where this post is headed. In the interest of time, let’s assume I’ve already written enough hyperbole about how great this video is, and also enumerated a sufficient number of points about how current motorcycle industry marketing offends me on a variety of visceral levels. With only a few more weeks remaining in 2011, let’s instead shift the discussion and begin the countdown as to when KTM will bring a larger displacement Duke to the US market.