Motorcycles

The brainchild of a Swedish Stefan Ytterborn, Cake intends “to speed up the journey towards a zero-emission society, while enhancing excitement and fun.” And their very first step is this Kalk electric off-roader that blurs the line between mountain bikes and motorcycles.

Further developing their product strategies, Cake entered into a partnership with Swedish all-green electricity provider Utellus to create solar charging environment specifically to charge their range of electric motorcycles.

The Aprilia RSV4 has been a well-accomplished name in the circuits of SBK championship, where the motorcycle has already recorded seven world titles in a span of six years. It is this testimony of the RSV4, which has made it quite unshakable when it comes to consistency in the liter class supersport segment.

For 2018, Aprilia North America is bringing a limited edition of the RSV4 to be launched on 22 April at the GP of Americas in Austin, Texas. It’s called the RSV4 RF LE and will be the world’s first road-legal production superbike that will come equipped with aerodynamic winglets.

Launched at the 2017 Tokyo International Motor show, the Japanese brand set the pace with this stunning three-wheeled machine called the Niken. It is a three-wheeled motorcycle based on the hugely popular MT-09 platform that gets double the grip on the front and heightened ride stability for carving corners with minimal effort. Basically, Yamaha has stepped up their game with this.

Being the most talked about bike ever since its launch, the Niken showcases a crazy new innovation called the Leaning Multi-Wheeler (LMW), and now, the Japanese Blue Team has released a new technical video showcasing fresh new information that lets us understand its ’ultimate corner carving experience’.

The Aprilia RSV4 has been a well-accomplished name in the circuits of SBK championship, where the motorcycle has already recorded seven world titles in a span of six years. It is this testimony of the RSV4, which has made it quite unshakable when it comes to consistency in the liter class supersport segment.

Now, the same V four soul has made its way into another Italian body to go win races. The Italian we are talking about here is not another two-wheeled dreamer but is a Formula X single seater race car called the Wolf GB08 Thunder. Running on the 65 degree V4 machine for the first time, the race car will run at the Italian Sport Prototype Championship 2018.

In a bid to make motorcycling safe, manufacturers are foraying deep into embedding technology and innovation into their products to help riders stay safe on their bikes. Motorcycle accidents are close to 30 times more than those of cars, and Ducati is in an effort to minimize that as much as possible.

According to Ducati’s “2025 Safety Road Map” plan, future motorcycles will have the technology to determine the range, angle, or velocity of other road users in real time via front and rear radar. This will allow the vehicles to be aware of each other on the road and avoid untoward incidents that may involve human error.

The Ducati Scrambler family has been rapidly expanding since its inception — in both the displacement ranges and available styles — but the stalwart Icon remains largely the same into the 2018 model year. It brings the same street-wise spice to the table as ever, and it comes paired with the 803 cc L-twin that delivers its 75 ponies in an easy-to-manage powercurve. Ducati also expanded its palette a bit with the addition of the “Silver Ice” hue. Little else is changed for the ’18 season, but why in the world would Ducati change something that seems to be working so well and is of such a recent vintage? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

Continue reading for my review of the Ducati Scrambler Icon.

Live supercar show “Top Marques Monaco” is moving this year with a sensational line-up of vehicles confirmed for its 15th-anniversary edition including brand-new supercars, rare classic cars, and an exceedingly rare million-dollar motorbike.

Yes, a motorcycle that has six zeros’ on its price tag. This is an extremely Limited Edition bike that’s called the "T12 MASSIMO" that was the final brainchild of Massimo Tamburini, also known as the ’Michelangelo of Motos’. Only 12 of these samples will be ever made, each for a million bucks.

Is being a woman and wanting to ride a motorcycle a big deal nowadays? It isn’t as much a ’big deal’ now as it was a few decades ago. Our culture is more open to folks of the female gender doing anything and everything we want to do, but there is still a certain barrier when it comes to riding a motorcycle. Why? Because traditionally, bikes were designed with men in mind, at least 5’ 8” tall and with enough upper body strength to wrestle the weight and pick one up if it ended up on its side. Women were generally relegated to cruisers because we are typically shorter than men and cruisers have the low seat heights. That is changing as more manufacturers recognize that there is a whole customer base out here with money to spend. So what shall we spend our money on if we don’t want a plain ol’ cruiser?

Continue reading for my top 5 motorcycle picks that aren’t cruisers.

We’ve all seen the news. Harley-Davidson, the iconic American motorcycle manufacturer, has announced plans to close its Kansas City, Missouri, plant next summer and move operations to its York, Pennsylvania, plant. The Harley-haters are having tailgate parties and lots of folks are wringing their hands and quoting numbers and statistics over what could be spun into a story about a failing business. But is it really? What is really going on at MoCo headquarters?

Continue reading for my take on the plant closing and what it means.

Ducati is ticking off the boxes in a list of “first in safety” when it comes to technology. They’re the first motorcycle manufacturer in the world to have a vehicle interact with the jacket-integrated D|air system, and they’re the first to equip a classic model with the ground-breaking ABS Cornering system. So where do they go from here in their bid to introduce new safety systems and technologies? How about front and rear radar? How about front and rear radar that is already slated for 2020 release on one of its models?

Continue reading for more on Ducati’s safety innovations.

Suzuki gave its iconic sportbike an overhaul for 2017 with a new liquid-cooled engine, a new frame, new ECM, new ride-by-wire throttle bodies and a host of other goodies to keep this ride current and relevant in its sixth generation. The engineers at the factory show their love for the GSX-R1000 by making it the most powerful and hardest accelerating Gixxer-with-a-single-R to date with a horsepower boost that pushes the claimed figure up to 199 ponies at the shaft. Simultaneously, the engineers made the foundation both lighter and stronger so even more of the available power makes it to pavement. End result; more of what we expect from the Gixxer family.

Continue reading for my review of the Suzuki GSX-R1000.

A Swiss mechanical engineer and ardent biker, Guido Koch, has patented an all-wheel-drive system based on a KTM 990 ADV motorcycle. Called the DT-A, Koch has worked on the all-wheel-drive system for nearly a decade and is on the outlook for investments to make it onto a full mass production scale.

The DT-A has retained only the engine, rear wheel, swingarm and the brake system of the original KTM 990. To set up the front-end with the drive, Koch modified the front suspension unit and swapped the conventional telescopic fork with a single-arm swingarm. It receives the drive unit via a chain linkage from the same LC8 motor.

The Swedish 2-stroke specialists, Suter, makes the $140,000 MMX 500 that’s been judged as the ultimate track weapon by honchos all around the industry. The 576cc V-4 delivers a claimed 195 hp and is well complimented by the Moto2 derived chassis and some top-spec Ohlins’ and Brembos’.

Only 99 salable units are being made creating exclusivity which means that they will hold their value better than most machines. If you are one of those many chaps like me, then you might have another small window of chance to own one MMX 500; albeit a 1:12 scale precision model.

Suzuki hits MY18 with a shiny new V-Strom 1000 after a one-year hiatus, and it seems the factory spent that time wisely. The range retains the V-Strom 1000 and adds the off-road-tastic 1000XT to the adventure mix for the folks who favor the road (or non-road) traveled by few. Power remains the same at the 100-pony mark, but the mill upped its emissions game to meet the current requirements with a new exhaust system. Electronics received a buff as well with a new Bosch Inertial Measurement Unit that refines the ABS system to include lean-sensitive intervention for an extra layer of protection for those times when the available traction is split between steering and braking forces. Overall, the new V-Stroms look to be a little more capable and user friendly than the previous gen with more top-shelf goodies even if the top-end is currently showing a flat growth curve.

Continue reading for my review of the Suzuki V-Strom 1000 and 1000XT.

The National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, UK, has the winter raffle contest going on for a while now and is drawing to a close. It is running for one final week, and the contest winner stands a chance to win a 2018 Triumph Speedmaster.

All you need to do is to spend £2 ($10) to buy an entry ticket for the museum, and you could just get lucky. Even if you didn’t win, you still could feel proud about having helped the museum with showcasing some of history’s iconic motorcycles to enthusiasts just like you and me.

Born out of a small custom workshop in Birmingham, UK, Mutt Motorcycles entered the production arena with tiny, aggressive looking retro motorcycles underpinned by Chinese and Japanese chassis and motors. Add a host of custom-made components, and the Mutts have managed to cough up quite a decent line-up of some mean looking machines on two-wheels.

For their recent installment, Mutt has come out with the most badass 125cc motorcycle on the planet. Named after the pioneers of heavy metal music, who also come from the same town as Mutt, the “Fat Sabbath” is their brand-new entry into the line of black-themed neo-retro motorcycles that are the blackest of the black (if there is even anything like that).

For the folks who custom build for a living, BMW’s boxer layout is their holy grail. Nothing else looks as retro and authentic as the two pods pouting out of the frame. Builders turned these spirited machines into a beacon of beauty, simplicity, class, and definition.

A French design house called Dab Designs have had their go on the BMW R NineT, but it isn’t a built like the one you think. There is no cutting, no welding, none of that dirty, oily stuff, but just a bolt-on pre-fabricated kit that can do the customized work for you in just under a couple of hours. It’s called the ER kit.

Honda’s metro-tastic PCX150 [scooter2256] line gets an upgrade that we’ll get to see on U.S. showrooms come July of 2018. It includes a facelift from stem to stern that further polishes its ’luxe metropolitan looks to bring more of the swank and swagger associated with the marque, and it comes paired with a more voluminous underseat storage area to increase its ’commuterability’. Style and function is a tough combination to beat, so let’s dig a little deeper and see what else the Red Rider engineers have in store for us.

Continue reading for my look at the Honda PCX150.

Tank Slappers, steering wobbles, shimmy, speed wobble, and even death wobble are all names of the same dangerous situation that can happen to any motorcycle rider, especially for all the sportsbike fanatics. That is not at all a nice feeling when out of nowhere your bike starts wobbling like a maniac and there is very little that you could do.

That is exactly what happened to this bloke here who was caught on a GoPro footage taken by fellow motorcyclists while they were doing a high-speed freeway run. At 130 mph, his Ninja ZX-6R started wobbling heavily leaving the rider with no control of the bike for several hundred meters before the bike slowed back down and the rider gained control.