Tag

sport tourer

Browsing

Every year, the EICMA show awards its “most beautiful bike” of the Milan event, and every year the winner is unsurprisingly an Italian machine.

Whether you attribute that to the Italian manufacturers being superior in their motorcycle designs, or if perhaps there is a home-team bias in the EICMA crowd, we will let you decide for yourself.

More often that not though, we take umbrage with EICMA’s picks, as the selection seems to rarely stray from a couple Italian marques, while also overlooking a more worthy recipient.

That is fine and all, and this year’s pick, the MV Agusta Superveloce Ago is a very good looking motorcycle – no doubt about it.

But 2021 is one of those years where we differ once again from the EICMA voting masses, as we would have picked the Moto Guzzi V100 Mandello instead.

The Moto Guzzi V100 Mandello can lay claim to a number of firsts. The first production motorcycle to offer active aeros. The first Moto Guzzi to feature semi-active suspension…an IMU…cornering ABS…quickshifter…liquid-cooling…

Well, it’s the first Moto Guzzi with just about anything modern, but it is the adaptive aerodynamics package that should really turn heads, and it is interesting to see the Piaggio Group featuring this technology on the Eagle brand, rather than the sport-focused Aprilia name, which first teased the idea.

The 1,084cc parallel-twin engine in the Honda Africa Twin 1100 is a sweetheart of a motor, and so it doesn’t surprise us to see Honda using it on bikes like the Honda Rebel 1100.

Punchy, linear, and smooth, the twin-cylinder power plant is good for a variety of applications, and it looks like Big Red is about to give it one more additional duty.

Teasing a “new touring era” of motorcycles on YouTube today, Honda is most definitely getting us ready for what will be called the NT1100X in the European market.

The folks at Suzuki have a surprise for us today, showing off one of their 2022 models a bit earlier than expected. The bike is the Suzuki GSX-S1000GT – a long-distance sport-tourer built off the GSX-S1000 platform.

That pedigree means that the Suzuki GSX-S1000GT is built off the “K6” GSX-R1000 engine, and should make about 150hp in US trim, with 78 lbs•ft of torque on tap from its inline-four engine. Wet weight is set at 498 lbs (226 kg).

We have just seen the unveiling of the Suzuki GSX-S1000 (and in Europe, its underpowered sibling, the Suzuki GSX-S950), and now we get word that Suzuki is working on a touring version of the platform.

Spotted by the eagle eye of Ben Purvis at Cycle World, European homologation documents show a Suzuki “GSX-S1000T” is on the books (horribly rendered in a “five-minute photoshop” above) , and it could be a replacement for the Suzuki GSX-S1000F model.

For the next two days, we will be working from Salt Lake City, Utah where we will be getting our first chance to swing a leg over the new third-generation Suzuki Hayabusa.

Built off the second-generation model, Suzuki insists that this bike is “all new” in design, and that is because this bird has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb to make it the ultimate Hayabusa ever from the Japanese brand.

I often feel like the Ducati SuperSport 950 is the forgotten model in the Italian brand’s lineup of machines. Maybe it’s the Panigale-esque styling, maybe it’s the diminutive 108hp (81 kW) rating, or maybe the crossover sport bike with touring bags thing.

Whatever the case may be, the handsome little motorcycle is an interesting niche in Ducati’s range of motorcycles, and for the 2021 model year, it gets a welcomed refresh.

With a bevy of photos coming from its European launch, I thought it worth some time to talk about this odd duck from Borgo Panigale.

When we didn’t hear anything from KTM during the typical new model year blitz at the end of the last year, we worried that the Austrian brand had decided to pack it in, after the tumultuous ride of 2020.

Don’t worry though, KTM hasn’t forgotten about its 2021 obligations, and zie Austrians have more than a few plucky machines to debut for the current model year.

Two of the biggies are a new KTM 1290 Super Duke GT and an updated KTM 1290 Super Adventure lineup, as both bikes are being teased on its social media channels right now with a January 26th release date.

When we first saw the Honda CB4X concept at EICMA last year, we fell in love at first sight. Honda Motor Europe has a history of making intriguing concept designs, and the CB650 platform lends itself to some beautiful options.

With the reception that the CB4X received, it seemed likely that Honda would bring the bike to market, and fuel was added to that fire when Big Red filed for intellectual property protections for the concept’s design.

Now, we get some hope from Japan (thanks to the folks at AutoBy) for the future of the Honda CB4X, though the bike has taken a turn in its evolution.