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Finally finding a purchaser at its second auction, Moto Morini has seemingly been given a new lease on life after finding a pair of investors willing to back the Italian brand. Buying the company’s assets, but not the property where it resides, entrepreneurs Sandro Capotosti and Ruggeromassimo Jannuzzelli paid €1.96 million for the Moto Morini name, IP, and other proprietary assets.

With both investors saying they have an emotional tie to Moto Morini motorcycles, they also both come with some serious business acumen. For instance, Capotosti is the former chairman of the Banca Profilo and Jannuzzelli was the former VP and Group CEO of Camuzzi, an Italian energy group.

AMA Pro Racing and the Virginia International Raceway have been having a war of the press releases the past few days, as it was announced that AMA road racing will not be taking place at the fabled mid-Atlantic track later next month. With AMA Pro Racing first announcing on Monday that the event scheduled for August 12th-14th was cancelled, the sentence immediately following that statement must have struck a nerve with VIR, as it read: “Despite AMA Pro Racing’s efforts to preserve the originally scheduled August 12-14 event, VIR staff notified AMA Pro Racing late Monday, July 11, of its final decision not to host or promote the race weekend.”

VIR followed up on Tuesday with a statement of it’s own, lambasting AMA Pro Racing for putting the blame on the Virginia track, and shifted the accusations onto AMA Pro Racing, who according to VIR was tardy in getting the raceway a contract in time to properly promote the event. With each side seemingly telling only part of the story, speculation has been rife as to what really went down between America’s premier road racing series, and one of our most prestigious venues.

Though we have no inside-knowledge of what transpired between the two parties, friction between tracks and promoters typically comes down to pie slices, and who gets the bigger piece. With VIR’s 10-year contract to host AMA Pro Racing in expiration, the renegotiation of the contract apparently fell apart. Reading between the lines on the press releases, it would seem to us that while negotiations have been ongoing, AMA Pro Racing gave VIR its final offer, which the track did not accept. While it is impossible to say who is right or wrong in this blow-out, it’s pretty easy to tell who the big losers are: the fans. Press releases after the jump.

BMW Motorrad continues to post improved sales in 2011, as the German manufactuer is showing a 2.1% increase for last month’s sales compared to June 2010. Selling 11,831 motorcycles in June of this year, BMW has sold 141,913 motorcycles in the first half of 2011, which means 6.3% more Bavarian motorcycles have been sold in Q1 & Q2 of 2011 compared to last year. BMW’s Boxer series is unsurprisingly leading sales for the company, fueled by the best selling big-displacement motorcycle in the world: the R1200GS.

BMW is reporting strong sales from the K1600 series as well though, with 1,255 units sold since its Spring 2011 debut. While BMW says that the new six-cylinder tourer is exceeding expectations, Husqvarna’s paltry 450 units sold last month is perhaps a bit of disappointment. Husky sales were down -57.3% for June, while year-to-date sales were down -24.2% with only 3,530 units sold in the first half of 2011.

If you follow where the volume and the growth in the motorcycle industry come from, then it should be no surprise to hear that Triumph has announced its intention to enter the Indian market with its motorcycles. The 109-year-old brand based out of Hinckley is just the latest of many major OEMs to enter India, whose high tariffs and exploding market necessitate a local presence by manufacturers in order to be competitive. Rest assured the rest of this post will be devoid of any mention of the irony in the British brand entering into the once British colonial market of India.

According to cleantech news site NewNet News, MotoCzysz is looking to raise $10 million through a 25% stake in the company. Securing its first MotoCzysz D1g1tal Dr1ve technology order, MotoCzysz is looking to bring its drivetrain products into full production with this investment, as the company reports it is close to securing further industry collaborations.

Funded to-date primarily by high-networth individuals, MotoCzysz will surely seek venture capital investment to raise the needed $10 million. “We have not gone down the venture capital route yet and I think that has so far been of benefit to the company,” said Michael Czysz to NewNet. “We are open to venture capital investment, we would just choose our partners very carefully

Talking to the Birmingham NewsConfederate Motorcycles spokesman Clay Morrison said that the boutique motorcycle firm will remain in Alabama, opting not to return to its origin of New Orleans. Expecting its best sales year ever, Confederate was reportedly offered $750,000 by the City of New Orleans to return to the bayou, but with most of its staff based out of Birmingham now, not to mention the supplier and vendor relationships the company has created in the Southern state, Confederate has decided to stay-put.

The rumors that Harley-Davidson has been eying a liquid-cooled motor design have always been in abundance, and 10 years ago we saw the company test the waters of that pool with the Porsche-engineered lump that was found in the V-Rod. While the VRSC line may not have been as big of a success compared to the other models in Harley’s line-up, the water-cooled bastard child of Milwaukee still seems to sell in the tens of thousands each year, even after nearly a decade of only cosmetic revisions.

Faced with an aging demographic, an uninspired motorcycle line-up, and 21 takes on the same motorcycle design, there’s a push internally at Harley-Davidson to break-out and find a new way to engage riders, especially younger riders. The core ethos of change seems to start at the motor itself, and Harley-Davidson has already done the rounds at various electric motorcycle and drivetrain companies. There also exists amount of external and internal pressure over Harley’s pervasive use of air-cooled motors, and now whispers of a water-cooled v-twin power plant have gotten louder in Milwaukee. With those rumors now reaching a boiling point (see what I did there?), Harley-Davidson has patented a very clever way of adding liquid-cooling to its iconic v-twin motor design.

If Moto Morini was a household dog, someone would have taken it out to the backwoods and put the damn thing down already. Yet, Administrators in charge of handling the bankrupt company’s assets are gearing up for yet another attempt to auction the brand, building, anything in order to get some euros back for Moto Morini’s creditors. Set to take place on July 19th, the auction aims to sell the company and its premises for €4.65 million (down from €5.5 million), but will strike a deal on the assets for a cool €1.95 million (also down from €2.6 million). Will this make a difference? Probably not.

Lawyers have begun an investigation into the recent rumors that private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) was targeting Harley-Davidson for a stock takeover.

Suspecting that Harley-Davidson executives breached their fiduciary responsibility to Harley-Davidson, Inc., investigators were tipped-off to potential breaches at the Milwaukee company after its stock rose by $2 (+5%) immediately after the rumors were first published in financial reports.

With all this talk about alternative vs. established sales schemes in the motorcycle industry, it seems fitting that we hear now that Kawasaki has decided to take its Costco sales referral program nationwide. We reported a while back that Kawasaki was teaming up with Costco, in a program that saw the wholesale supply chain acting as a sales lead for local dealers. At the time, the program was only in the trial phase, but it seems now Team Green liked the results, and has decided to take the program across the US.

The BMW Group has reported its monthly and year-to-date (YTD) sales for May 2011, and the results are a mixed bag for the German company. Selling the lion’s share of motorcycles in the group, BMW Motorrad posted a modest 3.5% sales increase last month, over the sales figures from May 2010, and a 7.3% sales increase over YTD sales compared to last year as well.

However, BMW’s other motorcycle subsidiary, Husqvarna, didn’t fare quite as well. The Swedish brand posted a 59.5% drop in sales for May 2011, with that figure helping contribute to a 14.6% drop in YTD figures compared to 2010. The silver lining perhaps in that news is that Husqvarna sold only 537 bikes this may, while BMW Motorrad sold 12,568 (roughly half of what the MINI brand sold last month).