When renders of the CCM Spitfire roadster hit the internet, it cause quite the stir. The British brand was clearly onto something with its 600cc four-stroke thumper.

A bespoke machine priced around £7,995 – the CCM is not only an intriguing design, but remarkably affordable. It shouldn’t surprise us then to hear that the Spitfire has sold out.

Hopefully the folks at Clews Competition Machines realize that they hit an interesting niche squarely on the head, and produce more basic and affordable machines like this.

It looks even better in real life as it does in the computer renders. See for yourself, after the jump.

MotoGP

Team launches are always a little combative. Even by normal standards, though, the words spoken at KTM’s team launch were more than ordinarily abrasive. In an interview with Austrian broadcaster Servus TV, KTM CEO Stefan Pierer took plenty of potshots at his rivals. He boasted of KTM passing BMW in terms of sales, adding that beating them in racing would be hard, “because they don’t race any more”. He spoke of competing against the Japanese manufacturers. “We love racing, and we love beating the Japanese manufacturers.” But Pierer reserved his sharpest ire for Honda. Speaking of the surprise decision to compete in Moto2, he joked that the spec Moto2 engine was supplied by “our most hated rival Honda”.

Podcast

Episode 44 of the Two Enthusiasts Podcast is very special, because we have our very first guest on the show, Michael Lock from AMA Pro Racing. Some of you might know Lock as the man behind the freshly rebranded American Flat Track series, and he has deep roots in the motorcycle industry, leading the US efforts for Ducati and Triumph, as well as working for Honda in the UK and across Europe. As such, we had a very interesting time picking Lock’s brain about the current state of the US motorcycle industry, what is wrong with road racing, and what he is doing with flat track (with a bevy of side topics along the way, of course). You will want to grab some provisions before hitting the play button on this show, because this one is super long (two hours) – we just didn’t want to cut out any of Lock’s insights.

Bikes

KTM is the new kid on the block, for the 2017 MotoGP season – and it is clear from the test times at Phillip Island that the Austrian brand has some work left to do on its V4-powered race bike. The 2017 KTM RC16 is notably slower than its competitors, though shows a great deal of promise – especially as just a newcomer to the series. KTM’s riders, Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro, will be looking to tame KTM’s monstrously powerful engine into something that can put the power to the tarmac, and they will also be looking to refine the steel-tube chassis into a proper scalpel on two wheels. In other words, the 2017 season will be a development season. Though a rookie season it will be, KTM’s partnership with Red Bull means that the squad is no stranger when it comes to marketing and presentation.