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Big news today regarding Pierer Mobility (the parent company to KTM, Husqvarna, and GasGas) and MV Agusta, as the Austrian company is set to take a 25.1% ownership stake in the Italian manufacturer.

The news comes just a couple weeks after it was announced that KTM North America would takeover distribution of MV Agusta's motorcycles in the United States, and quells rumors that have been circling about KTM's interest in the Varese brand.







Through a terse press release, the two companies have released few details on their strategic alliance, but it does seem that the ownership stake in MV Agusta comes with a lifeline of capital to keep Italian factory churning out exotic sport bikes.

The press release also explains that Pierer Mobility will takeover the supply chain and purchasing for MV Agusta, and that KTM et al will handle distribution for MV Agusta in certain unnamed markets - like what has already been announced in the USA.

Source: MV Agusta







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Episode 60 of the Brap Talk motorcycle podcast is out with another “weekly” episode, for your two-wheeled listening pleasure.

Our show begins with a talk about the debut of the Aprilia Tuono V4, which is well-timed as Jensen will soon be riding the newly updated RSV4 model.

The show also covers the updates to the MV Agusta 800cc lineup, and what this Italian brand can do to win the hearts and minds of US dealers, with special insights from Shahin.

We also discuss adaptive cruise control, the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP recall, and the sell-out of the KTM 1290 Super Duke RR.

As you can tell, it’s a packed show, and we think you will find it to be an interesting. As always, keep checking back for our “weekly” chats.

You can find the latest episodes of the Brap Talk Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, SpotifySoundCloud, or via your RSS feed. If you would like to become an A&R Pro member, you can do so here.

And if you’re not already, you should also listen to our sister podcasts, the MOTR Podcast and the Paddock Pass Podcast.

Source: SoundCloud

Episode 35 of the Brap Talk podcast is now out for your two-wheeled audio pleasure, and is packed full of motorcycle discussion for your open-road loving hearts.

In it, we talk a bit more about the Ducati Streetfighter V4 S, as Shahin got to spend a weekend with this impressive machine.

The bulk of the show, however, is about how the coronavirus outbreak is shaping the motorcycle industry – specifically on what it can mean for motorcycle dealerships.

Part of a new series for our A&R Pro readers, we will be providing regular digests of motorcycle news, topics, and issues from key regions around the world, in an effort to make sure our readers have a firm grasp on the pulse of the entire industry.

Our first edition looks to our friends to the north, where our colleague Zak Kurylyk tell us how the Canadian motorcycle industry is handling the coronavirus outbreak. Look for more installments, from other regions, in the weeks to come. -JB

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is hurting the bike industry as a whole, but for the Canadian motorcycle scene, it is potentially disastrous. Think 2008 financial crisis, but on steroids. If the 2008 recession was King Gong, then COVID-19 is going to be Godzilla.

The timing couldn’t be worse, due to the seasonal structure of the riding season in Canada, and due to the massive drop in oil prices. As a result, most of the problems faced by the American industry are intensified in Canada.

Very few Canadian motorcyclists are actually riding this time of year, but March-April is when deals get done, and money changes hands, Without this, all the major players are going to take a big hit. Retailers, rally organizers, race teams - everybody's looking at having 2020 essentially wiped out.

As a result, most of the problems faced by the American industry are intensified in Canada. With all the questions surrounding the economy, it's likely some major players are never coming back.

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With a couple caveats, I would describe the track day business model as heavily commoditized. That is to say, there is little to differentiate the track day of one organization from the next, which leaves most riders buying track time based on location, schedule, and price.

If you don’t give it too much thought, this concept shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, what riders are really buying is time on the race track, the conditions of which are relatively outside the purview of the organization hosting the event. This makes a brutal business landscape, and it is not surprising to see the space making a race to the bottom.

Now to be fair, some organizations run a tighter ship than others; some track day groups offer more instruction than others (especially for novice riders); and there are track days that offer more perks (lunch, photos, celebrity riders, etc) than others, but all-in-all the product is the same: a few hours of cumulative time on a race track.

In my 15 years of track riding, the biggest differentiation I have found between track day groups is the culture (or lack thereof) an organization has been able to infuse into its program. But, this only moves the needle a minuscule amount, and it shows in the ever-increasingly competitive marketplace that is motorcycle track riding.

Just picture it. You are BMW, and you made the S1000RR superbike, the machine that completely changed the game in the liter-bike market.  And now, you are about to crank things to 11, with an all carbon fiber version of this wickedly popular motorcycle.

Perhaps the best track bike ever created, the BMW HP4 Race makes an honest 212hp at the crank, weighs 378 lbs...fully fueled at the curb, and it has all the top-shelf components you can dream of, all of which are bolted onto the carbon fiber frame, carbon fiber swingarm, and carbon fiber fairings.

A thoroughbred. A true race bike, by DNA. The astounding thing about the BMW HP4 Race is that it is more than the sum of its parts, which is saying something because the parts are simply the best that the motorcycle industry has to offer.

I know this because I got to spend a lucky five laps on the BMW HP4 Race at Laguna Seca, courtesy of BMW Motorrad USA, and while that duration is far too short to give any sort of meaningful feedback about this track-only superbike, the BMW HP4 Race is exactly what you think it is:  an S1000RR taken to the next level.

So then, why has the BMW HP4 Race been a colossal failure in the United States? Because it most certainly is.

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For as long as we have covered the Pied Piper dealership rankings, one brand has stood above all others in customer satisfaction, and that brand has been Ducati.

But for the 2016 rankings, we have a new boss in town, as BMW dealerships have taken the top honors in the most recent Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index.

For those readers who aren’t that aren’t familiar with Pied Piper, the company’s Prospect Satisfaction Index is sort of the Consumer Reports of a dealership network experience, and acts as a measuring stick for how a brand is performing when it comes to interacting with potential customers.

As such, the PSI takes into account a mixture of “mystery shopper” experiences, along with actual sales success for each brand, thus giving a mixture of subjective and objective measurement for a company’s dealer network.

In my last A&R Pro article, I argued that the recently debuted and updated Honda Rebel was the most important new motorcycle that we have seen thus far for the 2017 model year.

That is a bold statement, as many pointed out, especially when you consider the bevy of intriguing new models that were unveiled at the various industry trade shows this year, and also considering the lack-luster product the outgoing Honda Rebel 250 proved to be for many.

In that story, the bulk of my argument was that motorcycling needs an affordable gateway for young and new riders to come into the industry, and with cruisers accounting for over half of the new motorcycles sold in the United States, having cruiser-styled entry models is a shrewd move by Honda.

There is more to that argument though, which I want to touch upon today. It concerns the growing divide of motorcycle buyers, and how their access to capital greatly affects the motorcycles they can, and do, purchase.

American motorcycles sales fall almost entirely under what is called consumer discretionary income, and when it comes to how we spend our hard-earned money, there are two ways we do so: with cash and with credit.

That is the fairly obvious part of this argument, but this is an important concept for us as enthusiasts and consumers to understand, as it allows us to make better sense of the strategies behind the new models we see from manufacturers. It also allows us to peer into the future of the motorcycle industry.

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The gearbox recall for the 2015 Yamaha YZF-R1 was a massive undertaking. In total, the recall affected 2,921 motorcycles, with Yamaha estimating almost 16 hours of labor per bike in order to change out the gearbox. That’s a lot of shop time for each individual motorcycle.

That time isn’t cheap either, and the cost of the labor alone was somewhere around the $5 million mark. By the time you threw in the cost of the parts, the R1 recall likely cost Yamaha somewhere north of $10 million.

To get a sense of how long that recall work took, checkout this time-lapse video that a mechanic made while working on one of the affected superbikes. Be sure to note that the video spans two days of shop time. It’s quite the process.