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More on Kawasaki’s Supercharged Motorcycle Engine

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The tease of 2013 has to be Kawasaki and its supercharged four-cylinder engine, which the Japanese OEM debuted at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show. Showing the engine, and giving virtually no information about the intended uses of the supercharged power plant, we have been left to speculate over what Kawasaki’s intentions are in the two-wheeled forced-induction realm.

Diving through the Google’s database of patent applications though,  we see that over the years Kawasaki has published a number of patents that relate to adding a supercharger to a motorcycle. Not only has Kawasaki been thinking about how to fit a supercharger into a motorcycle for some time now, but the OEM has some clever tricks up its sleeve in order to optimize its designs.

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Bikes

Confederate C2 P-51 Fighter — Pierre Terblanche’s Latest Motorcycling Creation

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It has been over two years since we saw a new motorcycle from Confederate Motors, but you would be wrong to think that the boutique Southern brand has been sitting idly by all this time.

Earlier this year, Confederate added esteemed motorcycle designer Pierre Terblanche to its ranks, and now we get to see the first fruition of the South African’s influence on the American motorcycle company.

Announcing today the Confederate C2 P-51 Fighter, Terblanche has created Confederate’s second-generation model of the Fighter line — no easy feat to build upon, as Terblanche calls the original fighter one of his all-time favorite motorcycle designs.

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Racing

AMA Pro Road Racing Modifies Classes & Rules for 2015

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AMA Pro Racing  announced today that by 2015 it will overhaul the racing class structure and rules for the AMA Pro Road Racing series. The changes are designed to make America’s premier road racing series more cost-effective, and to bring AMA Pro Road Racing inline with other national and international racing divisions.

Perhaps the most important change to the racing structure, AMA Pro Racing says that the Superbike class will see incremental changes made to the technical rules package over the next two seasons “in the interest of rule commonality, performance parity, and cost containment.”

This likely means that AMA Pro Superbike will adopt rules similar to the rules progression seen in World Superbike, with EVO-spec bikes that more akin to Superstock series motorcycles being the mode du jour from 2015 and onward.

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Opinion/Editorial

Modular Design & Why the BMW R nineT is Such a Big Deal

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The first of the new BMW R nineT motorcycles rolled off its assembly line today, a fact that is only newsworthy because so many motorcycle publications are struggling for content in these coming winter doldrums.

It was only a month ago that we were overwhelmed with stories of new bikes debuting in Milan, and now we motorcycle journalists must scrounge around for anything lurid that is at least tangentially related to motorcycles. I hear there is a law student in Italy selling nude photos of herself so she can buy a new scooter. Juicy.

Who doesn’t like a good tit story, right? But instead I offer to you perhaps the biggest development in motorcycling this year — a story that no one else has thought to discuss, until now — and it is about the BMW R nineT itself, and what it represents not only for BMW Motorrad, but also for motorcycling as a whole.

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Bikes

Radical Ducati Matador

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We haven’t seen something from the boys at Radical Ducati in a while, so their timing with Radical Ducati Matador and the holidays seems like an early moto-related present.

For the un-initiated, Radical Ducati is a small shop in Madrid, Spain that specializes in Frankensteining together custom motorcycles from the Ducati parts bin.

Based around the Ducati 1198 Superbike lump, and featuring all the usual Radical Ducati parts, the Radical Ducati Matador is not only typical of the Spanish firm’s gritty design practice, but also makes us nostalgic for the now deceased Ducati Streetfighter 1098 platform, which hit upon the same raw vein during its brief time in Ducati’s lineup.

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Bikes

Triumph Daytona 250 Caught Testing

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Seeing a Daytona-inspired 250cc sport bike concept at the 2013 EICMA show, it hasn’t been a considerable amount of time since we last heard about Triumph’s plans to bring a quarter-liter motorcycle to market.

Set to be built at the company’s production facilities in India, the Triumph Daytona 250 (as it’s being called) will help bring the British brand to the hot markets of India and Southeast Asia.

Caught testing via a series of “spy photos” by Motorrad in Germany, we can see that Triumph hasn’t strayed far from its render preview, which itself didn’t stray far from the Daytona 675.

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Bikes

Voxan Wattman — A French Brand Revival Brings an Electric Power Cruiser to Market

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The Voxan brand has been reborn, this time with Gildo Pastor, the billionaire Monégasque man behind the Venturi automobile project. Building off of his experience with Venturi’s use of electric drivetrains, Pastor has revived the Voxan brand to bring electric motorcycles to market, thus making good on his promise in 2010 to bring an electric to market within three years.

The Voxan Wattman, the company’s first new model, has just broken cover at the Paris Auto Show, and the machine sports a power cruiser form factor with some eye-catching specs. At the Wattman’s core is a liquid-cooled 200hp permanent magnet motor that is also good for 147 lbs•ft of torque at 6,000 rpm.

Coming with ABS, traction control, and Beringer four-disc front brakes as standard, Voxan also quotes a 12.8 kWh lithium-ion battery pack as well. Visually hefty with its 240mm rear tire, the Voxan Wattman tips the scales at a portly 771 lbs — that number is not a typo.

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Bikes

And More Photos of the Suzuki Extrigger Electric Concept

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A brand better known for trotting out the same “timeless” designs each year, Suzuki seems to be finally waking up from its recession-induced slumber, and debuted two intriguing motorcycle concepts at the Tokyo Motor Show.

We already showed you today more photos of the turbocharged Suzuki Recursion street bike concept (please Suzuki, build this bike), and the Japanese OEM has shown a shining for the budding electric segment as well.

The Suzuki Extrigger electric concept is an interesting machine, as its form factor is very similar to the Honda Grom. Using the same electric motor as the company’s Suzuki E-Let’s scooter, we can assume that the Extrigger is packing the same unimpressive figures of 2hp and 11 lbs•ft of torque as the E-Let, though Suzuki does say that the Extrigger weighs a paltry 137 lbs, which is alluring.

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Bikes

More Photos of the Turbo-Powered Suzuki Recursion

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Forced-induction was the trend du jour at the Tokyo Motor Show, with Kawasaki showing off a supercharged four-cylinder engine and with Suzuki debuting its turbocharged Recursion concept.

While Team Green is being tightlipped with what exactly its up to (all we know is that the supercharged motorcycle engine has been developed completely in-house), Suzuki is more keen with teasing its machine.

Releasing some more photos of the Suzuki Recursion, this bike is looking like a winner to us, with its water-cooled 588cc twin-cylinder engine that features an intercooled turbocharger.

Suzuki says the engine package is just shy of 100hp at 8,000 rpm, with peak torque coming in at 74 lbs•ft at 4,500 rpm. The Suzuki Recursion is also quoted as being 384 lbs dry.

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Bikes

Fluid Ducati Superleggera Concept by Gannet Design

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You would be hard-pressed to improve upon the design of the Ducati 1199 Superleggera, as the “superlight” superbike has equal helpings of design and technical beauty.

That hasn’t stopped Ulfert Janssen of Gannet Design though, as the German designer has inked an interesting take on Ducait’s 1199 platform, which he calls the Fluid Ducati Superleggera.

Janssen’s renders have some interesting elements to them, though we suspect that the Ducatisti are already sharpening their pitchforks. What do you think?

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Racing

Were These the Luckiest Guys at the Macau GP?

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Proper road racing is a dangerous game, as the spectacle unfolds upon all of the uncertainty that comes with public roads, rather than the controlled environment of a proper closed-course racing circuit.

The competitors you find at events like the Irish road races, the Isle of Man TT, or the Macau Grand Prix are a unique breed to be doing what they do, where they do it; and if you talk to many of them, the prospect of an untimely ending is something that has already been factored into the cost of what that choose to do.

No one goes looking for an early death, of course, but the realities of the situation are ever-present. Just last year, Luis Carreira lost his life while qualifying at the Macau GP, a reminder of how dangerous the armco-laced Guia race track can be for motorcyclists.

Thankfully the 2013 Macau Grand Prix was without major incident, but we did have a close-call on the first lap between Horst Saiger and Marc Fissette. The event’s photographers captured the contact and subsequent crashes with their cameras, giving us a frame-by-frame perspective into what was thankfully just a bad day at the office for these two riders.

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