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Suzuki’s SV650X Brings Heritage to a Line that Has None

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You would have to be living under a rock not to notice the heritage theme that has taken the motorcycle industry by storm.

That being said, Suzuki’s hibernation, as we like to call the company’s complete withdrawal from the two-wheeled space during the recession, is a lot like living under a rock.

Finally seeing the daylight, the Japanese brand is a bit late to the post-authentic retro game, and finds itself having to scramble to stay relevant. That is to say, this is how we read the fact that Suzuki has only one new machine for 2018: the SV650X.

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Kawasaki Ninja Z900RS Cafe Brings Modern to Retro

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Kawasaki made an impression at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, debuting the new Z900RS standard. The premise was simple there: take the potent Kawasaki Z900 street bike, and dress it in retro clothing.

The effect was something that looked incredibly like the Kawasaki Zephyr of old, but with modern brakes, suspension, traction control, and even a slipper-assist clutch. Now we see that Team Green plans on already expanding the line, debuting today the 2018 Kawasaki Ninja Z900RS Cafe.

Basically the Z900RS with a bikini fairing, this modern café racer should be a perfect fit for those riders that want an older looking motorcycle that doesn’t run like an older looking motorcycle.

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Mega Gallery: Husqvarna Vitpilen 701

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We have had to wait two years to see it come into production, but the Husqvarna Vitpilen 701 will finally be available to motorcyclists in March 2018. As an added bonus, the street-going machine stays true to its concept design, which wowed the crowd at last year’s EICMA show.

This year in Milan, the Husqvarna Vitpilen 701 is all the talk of EICMA, and while “Best in Show” at EICMA almost exclusively goes to an Italian marque, the real winners are surely coming from Austria, as both the Husqvarna Vitpilen 701 and KTM 790 Duke look like winners.

A duality from Mattighofen, KTM and Husqvarna approach motorcycles from two opposite spectrums. KTM lives in the extreme, with an edgy focus on its “Ready to Race” mentality. Conversely, Husqvarna is subtle and sophisticated…maybe even understated.

It is that understatement that has been the driving force behind the success of the brand’s Vitpilen and Svartpilen motorcycles, with both the “white” and “black” arrows showing unique design languages.

For the Husqvarna Vitpilen 701, the 690cc single-cylinder engine is wrapped in a modern take on an old design. As such, this neo café racer makes 75hp, 53 lbs•ft of torque, and is made tame by a traction control system.

Still, this new Husky must be an odd duck around the office, as Husqvarna is very terse on its basic specs and features, instead focusing on the design of this café racer. Such is the state of a bike that sells on emotion and lifestyle, rather than outright performance.

We imagine then that if you’re here, you can to ogle some photos. We have kept the 90+ photos attached to post in such an annoying large format that we will probably have to pay Amazon quite a bite extra this month for all the bandwidth.

If you want to help foot the bill, might we suggest an A&R Pro account?

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Things We Like, Part 2: Honda CB4 Interceptor Concept

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Honda Motor Europe is quickly making a name for itself when it comes to drool-worthy concept designs for Europe’s motorcycle shows, and this latest example at the 2017 EICMA show is proof of that statement.

This is the Honda CB4 Interceptor concept, and it makes our Hormone Monster want to do dirty, dirty things to the computer screen.

A continuation of Honda’s Neo Sports Café design aesthetic, which brought us Honda’s first CB4 concept back in 2015, this new edition focuses on a “Sport Endurance” idea from Big Red.

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Husqvana 701 Vitpilen Finally Going into Production

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On its Instagram account, Husqvarna is teasing the fact that its next Vitpilen model is finally going prime time. That’s right, the Husqvarna 701 Vitpilen will be unveiled tomorrow at EICMA as a production.

This shouldn’t be too big of a surprise for anyone following the Swedish brand (or who read our EICMA preview story), but considering the reception that the Husqvarna 701 Vitpilen concept got at last year’s show, we would expect the Husqvarna stand to be pretty crowded in Milan.

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This Is Surely the Suzuki SV650X, A Café Racer

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We are pretty confident that Suzuki has some interesting motorcycles for us at this year’s EICMA show. This is not one of them.

Part of the “me too” movement that the Japanese manufacturers are going through in order to have heritage motorcycles in their lineup, the 2018 Suzuki SV650X is exactly what you think it is: the company’s popular street bike, dressed in a vintage aesthetic.

There isn’t anything wrong with that, per se, as we have seen some great builds using the same formula, like the Yamaha XSR900 and more recently the Kawasaki Z900RS and Honda Neo Sports Café concept.

However, we know exactly what we are getting with the Suzuki SV650X, and it’s not pretty. With the concept already getting unveiled at the Tokyo Motor, we expect its debut for the Western markets to happen in Milan, Italy. Look for it next week.

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The Honda Neo Sports Café Concept Is Quite the Looker

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After much teasing, Honda quietly debuted its Neo Sports Café concept at the Tokyo Motor Show today. Releasing nary a detail about the simple but modern motorcycle design, we are left to draw our own conclusions about the machine.

We had hoped that the Honda Neo Sports Café would lead to a retro-styled version of the Honda CB1000R, much in the same vein that the new Kawasaki Z900S is a hipsterfied version of the popular Z900 street bike.

It’s not clear if Honda intends to produce the Neo Sports Café concept, but its design is intriguing, especially when you consider the now ancient four-cylinder engine that resides in its chassis, which is of course derived from the previous generation Honda CBR1000RR.

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Is Honda’s Neo-Sport Café a New Retro-Styled CB1000R?

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If we had to guess at a unifying theme for this year’s new bike launches, it would have to be “what is old is new again” as several brands are working on modern-engineered retro-styled motorcycles for the Tokyo and Milan expos.

Big Red is throwing its hat into the ring for this game as well, teasing what it calls the “Neo-Sport Café” on its YouTube channel. The videos center around Honda’s design and engineering team working on a new motorcycle, which will debut next month at the EICMA show in Milan.

In the teaser videos, we see a retro-looking motorcycle, with modern flares, such as an LED headlight, single-sided swingarm, and bazooka shaped exhaust can.

And then of course, there is the name” Neo-Sport Café and Honda’s description that it is true to “the spirt of the café racer.

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Naughty Quadro by Alexey Afanasyev

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If you needed more proof that the Ducati 1299 Panigale can make for an attractive retro-styled motorcycle (here, here, and here), then may we present to you one more piece of evidence, the “Naughty Quadro” by designer Alexey Afanasyev.

To make the Naughty Quadro, Afanasyev took the Panigale’s Superquadro engine and built around it an attractive and trendy body structure, which should look familiar to Scrambler owners. If the swingarm looks familiar too, that is because it is off of a Ducati Monster S2R 1000.

One of the most noticeable aspects of Afanasyev design is the custom radiator, which creates a tasteful line for the superbike engine, though we’re not sure if it will do the duty in heavy traffic.

Of course, the most interesting aspect of the motorcycle is that it isn’t a motorcycle at all…as Afanasyev has created some very detailed and very convincing renders for his concept on the computer, which include even the dirt and debris on the engine and tires. It’s really well-crafted.

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Italian Volt Lacama Electric Motorcycle Brings Some Style

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Italian Volt’s debut model, the Lacama, isn’t the most beautiful motorcycle that we have ever seen, but the Italian brand certainly has done a good job making a stylish machine for motorcycle enthusiasts.

Capable of hiding up to 15 kWh of batteries in its brick-like case, the Italian Volt Lacama does a good job of tackling one of the biggest design problems that motorcycle manufacturers face with electrics: styling the massive battery packs that these machines require.

Taking things a step further though, Italian Volt will offer the Lacama in several different form-factors, with owners able to choose from options that include café racer, scrambler, and roadster designs.

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Yard Built Yamaha XSR700 “Double-Style” by Rough Crafts

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Yamaha is continuing with its “Yard Built” custom motorcycle efforts for 2017, and the first bike of the year is actually two machines in one, from Tawaineese custom house Rough Crafts – the same builder of the very tasty MV Agusta “Ballistic Trident”.

Shown above is the road going “Corsa Scorcher” model, which takes the XSR700 heritage street bike model from Yamaha and turns it into a café racer.

Winston Yeh of Rough Crafts also has a “Soil Scorpion” scrambler model based off the XSR700, which can be created from the cafe racer by transforming the bike with swappable parts, in about an hour’s worth of time.

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