In gearing up for the new bike season, I wrote to our A&R Pro members that Suzuki is a brand that seems lost in the woods.
The new models are uninspiring, the marketing seems flat, and while the brand keeps bringing back names from the glory years, the bikes are shadows of their former selves.
A brand we often don’t hear too much about, Moto Morini is showing some interesting prospects that are set to debut at the upcoming EICMA show in Milan.
The biggest comes in the form of this teaser concept sketch (see above), which outlines the lines of an adventure-touring model from the Italian brand.
Now under Chinese ownership, Moto Morini is actually looking like it will have robust set of bikes debuting for the 2020 model year, with this ADV machine joined by both a scrambler and naked model.
It is finally here! Our favorite time of the year! I am of course talking about the new bike season, where the majority of the new motorcycles for the coming model year are debuted at events around the world.
For this round, the model year is going to be a year filled with new bikes, primarily because of the changes required for the Euro5 homologation. As such, we expect to see virtually every manufacturer coming out with something new, especially at the EICMA show in Italy and the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan.
What is interesting about this year’s edition though is how many bikes we will see before these to stalwart events. This is because the brands are finally catching on that their products get lost in the sea of unveilings that occur in Milan and Tokyo.
Accordingly, we see Ducati setting up its own special event in Rimini for October 23rd. Similarly, other brands have teased late-October and early-November unveiling dates for select models, though we expect more will follow Ducati’s lead in the coming years.
With a number of intriguing models teased and rumored ahead of these events, it will be interesting to see what actually comes true. To get our A&R Pro readers ready for the onslaught, I have put together one big fat awesome guide to the new motorcycle releases for 2020.
This list is as comprehensive as I can make it, and quite frankly a lot more detailed than what I’ve seen elsewhere on the internet, probably because it involves A&R pestering our Bothan spies for info all year.
I will update this story as more rumors surface ahead of the trade shows and unveiling events.
Not to be outdone by Ducati’s upcoming Streetfighter V4, the folks in Austria are gearing up to revise their highly acclaimed KTM 1290 Super Duke R.
As before, “Beast 2.0” gets teased to us with a variety of quick-cuts in a video, though each of them gives us a glimpse of what is to come from Mattighofen.
What we don’t see though is the spec-sheet, and that is where the new battle in the streetfighter segment is going to be waged.
When we rode the Moto Guzzi V85 TT in Sardinia, it was made clear that the Italian brand saw its new 850cc air-cooled v-twin engine as more than a one-trick pony.
Part of Moto Guzzi’s ability to offer the V85 TT at such an aggressive price is centered around the larger plans at hand in Mandello del Lario.
Namely, this strategy centers around several models sharing Moto Guzzi’s new engine platform, and it seems we are set to see the next iteration of the V85 lineup later this year.
This is because rumors are starting about Moto Guzzi debut its next V85 model at November’s EICMA show in Milan.
It seems we will see Ducati’s 2020 model year lineup a bit sooner than we expected, as the Italian brand will host a special unveiling event in Rimini, on October 23rd of this year.
At the special event, we expect Ducati to unveil more than a few motorcycles, the crown jewel likely being the Ducati Streetfighter V4.
Another bike we expect to see is the revamped Ducati Panigale 959, which will get a restyling to look like the Panigale V4, along with other features (and possibly a displacement increase) as the Euro5 regulations may necessitate.
The Ducati Multistrada V4 could make its debut in October as well, though early indications is that it will be a 2021 model, however we would expect another Scrambler model to be in the lineup this October, with revisions coming to some of Ducati’s other machines.