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Ducati 916 SP/SPS - Ultimate Desmoquattro Superbikes, Part I

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Seems that lately I’ve been on a Ducati kick. So far we’ve covered bevel heads and belt heads, so lets continue with the next generation of Ducati performance – the Desmoquattro. In this two part article I will cover the development and execution of the 916 Sport Production models, the ultimate Desmoquattro Superbikes. 
Seems I cover the 916 a lot on this site. Funny that.  

It’s 1985 and Ducati, with fresh capital and encouragement from new parent company Cagiva, is making a major gamble on the engine design of a talented young Italian engineer by the name of Massimo Bordi. Bordi’s engineering thesis was for a four-valve per cylinder desmodromic cylinder head, based on the principles of desmo valvetrains that had become a signature of the Ducati brand. Famed engineer Fabio Taglioni had developed the original Ducati desmo system, and then refined it with his belt-driven overhead cam Pantah design, but it was clear by the mid 80s that further development would be needed to keep Ducati twins on the podium.

In the mid 80s Ducati was doing well in TT1 and TT2 categories with their Pantah-based racers, and in the bigger categories the top-dog 750F1 was doing reasonably well in endurance racing and Battle of the Twins. The writing was on the wall for the air-cooled L-twins, however, and it was clear that more power was needed to keep pace. And if Ducati wanted to compete head to head against the Japanese superbikes, they needed something hotter than the little F1. 

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Massimo Bordi and Fabio Taglioni, with a Pantah twin on the test bench.

Taglioni, at this point in semi-retirement but still a driving force in the engineering department, was a staunch traditionalist when it came to engine design. He had experimented with belt driven, double cam, four valve heads on an air cooled 500cc Grand Prix prototype racer. He found that he was unable to produce power gains to justify the extra complexity of the design, and abandoned the idea to further refine the Pantah single-cam design. For Taglioni, the best way to improve the breed for racing was to develop an air-cooled Pantah V-4 by mating two L-twins together. He pursued this angle while Bordi worked in semi-secrecy on his liquid cooled design - legend has it Taglioni, famous for his stubborn temper, was so opposed to a four valve design that Bordi worked on the project at home to keep it secret.
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Bordi’s job was to further develop the Pantah design to include liquid cooling and a four-valve cylinder head with a narrow included valve angle for better combustion efficiency - and more power. He had to succeed where Taglioni, Ducati's most revered engineer, had failed. It was thus up to Bordi to prove his mettle and make the forthcoming Desmoquattro motor work.
The liquid-cooled, double overhead cam 748cc Otto Valvole Desmo prototype debuted at the 1986 Bol d’Or endurance race. Based on Pantah architecture with a combustion chamber design developed by Cosworth and state of the art fuel injection by Weber-Marelli the 748 i.e. OVD was a remarkable leap forward for Ducati. After some promising results and an healthy power boost over the air cooled 750F1 racers, Bordi developed the platform into an 851cc superbike that would achieve stunning success on the track and catapult Ducati into the winner’s circle against tough competition from overseas. Taglioni's objections were silenced when the new 851cc prototype cleared the 100hp mark on the Ducati test bed - the first time one of their twins had broken the triple-digit horsepower barrier. 
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Despite steadfastly sticking to their signature L-twin layout, and working with the associated power deficit compared to the Japanese fours, Ducati’s 851 and 888 racers achieved remarkable successes that lead to Superbike racing being facetiously labelled “the Ducati Cup” during the early 1990s.

The best, however, was yet to come in the form of the jaw-dropping Ducati 916, which slotted the (by now) well-developed Desmoquattro mill into a new chassis that allowed Ducati to remain competitive in a field of increasingly tough opposition. And if you wanted the ultimate 916 for the street, and one of the hottest and sport twins of the 1990s, you would order the magnificent 916SP/SPS.


Let’s step back a bit. While the 916 was unveiled to much fanfare in 1994, development had begun years before to address the limitations of the 851 in racing. The 916 took the existing motor and put it into a state-of-the-art frame and running gear that was developed as a unified whole by Massimo Tamburini and a team of engineers working over a period of six years. That fact that it was one of the most beautiful bikes of the 20th century was a happy coincidence and a product of Tamburini’s clever vision of a bike that was purposeful as it was pretty – the 916 was built to win races, not beauty pageants. The fact it did both is a testament to Tamburini’s genius.

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One of the final evolutions of the Desmoquattro before it was phased out in the mid 2000s in favour of the newer Testastretta motor design.
While the 851 had been developed in-house at the Ducati factory, the 916 project was contracted to a team in Rimini in led by Massimo Tamburini. A team of engineers and designers had to develop a platform for the Desmoquattro that would address a few of the deficiencies of the 851 and make the forthcoming, as yet unnamed, bike a better racer. The basic problem with the 851 is that the swingarm pivots through bearings in the engine cases while the frame bolts to the top half of the engine. The crankcases thus serve as the stressed member between the frame and the swingarm, which combined with the prodigious output of the factory racers was testing the limits of the Pantah crankcases. You see, the Desmoquattro shares its bottom end with the Desmodue, aka the Pantah. The original OVD prototype used the 750F1 crankcase with some slight modifications. Keep in mind that the Pantah mill started life as a 499cc, 50 hp air-cooled twin, and now the same basic crankcases and crankshaft were expected to deal with more than double that horsepower. Cracking cases were common and chassis stiffness was limited by the nature of the design, which owed a lot to the earlier 750 TT1 – an air cooled bike that wasn’t expected to handle triple-digit horsepower. 

Massimo Tamburini had been with Cagiva and Ducati since 1984, and had already designed the heavily streamlined but unpopular Paso sport-tourer. He had come to the company after leaving Bimota where he had cut his teeth in high-performance motorcycle design (Tamburini was a founder of the company, and is actually the “ta” in Bimota, along with Valerio Bianchi and Giuseppe Morri). He was assigned to project “2887” in 1988. Development took six years, but by 1991 the basic elements and styling had been finalized. Key areas of improvement over the 851/888 were specified – shorter wheelbase, better weight distribution, stiffer frame, better mass centralization, less weight, and a more aerodynamic design. Engine development was limited to a slight evolution of the 888 – based on experience on the track the 888cc motor was given a 2mm increase in stroke (now 94mm bore with 66mm stroke) and reinforced main bearings, resulting in a 916cc capacity with the same bore, pistons, barrels, cams, rods, crankcases, and cylinder head as the outgoing 888 Strada.


The frame was all new and much improved over the outgoing Superbikes. It had larger tubing and a much more compact design that was both stiffer and more centralized. A chrome moly steel trellis was chosen over an aluminium beam frame, and thus continued what would become a long standing Ducati tradition. The swingarm pivot, still in the same place, was now supported by the lower part of the frame and bearings were now in the swingarm rather than the crankcase. A trick single-sided-swingarm was used, based on the concept developed by Honda and ELF for quick tire changes in endurance racing (but sufficiently different so as not to infringe on the ELF patent…). Suspension front and rear was developed for the 916 and the 916 alone – Tamburini’s vision was to build a fully integrated motorcycle that shared as little as possible with existing models.

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Tamburini with his creation.
Almost every component outside of the motor and fuel injection system was developed exclusively for the 916, and designed as a unified whole. Thus each component was optimized and purposeful. Aerodynamics were improved by a slippery new shape with organic curves (based on the silhouette of a beautiful woman, as Tamburini continues to claim – presumably in a low voice between drags on his ever-present cigarette). A narrow frontal section contributed to a much-improved top speed despite a very modest power increase. Underseat exhausts streamlined the rear. Intake was improved by a larger airbox and a pressurized ram-air system with intakes fed from the front of the motorcycle.


Handling and performance were much improved. Chassis stiffness was way up, and the geometry was much better overall, with further capacity for adjustment via an eccentric headstock that allowed rapid rake and trail changes. Weight distribution was almost perfect, nearly 50/50. The whole package was much more compact, weighed less than the 888 (about 435lbs dry for solo seat versions), and the massaged motor with improved intake and exhaust provided much more midrange punch. The 916 was set to be a race winner.

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Racing team manager Virginio Ferrari, Cagiva boss Claudio Castiglioni, and engineer Massimo Bordi 
But it was the public response that truly created a legend when the 916 prototype was officially unveiled in 1993 with production scheduled for 1994. Dubbed the "Hypersport" series to distinguish it from the previous 851/888 "Superbike" (it would be renamed Superbike in the late 90s), the design and aesthetics were so advanced, so well integrated, and so beautiful that buyers immediately lined up with deposits. It was unlike anything seen before. Once reviewers got their hands on test models and discovered it went as well as it looked, the 916 became a mythical machine – one of the best bikes of the 20th century, and the object of lust and desire the world over. The late Kevin Ash was one of the first to review the 916 in 1994 and immediately recognized that the goal post had been moved forward by a fair margin.


Today we have become jaded and have forgotten just how much of a leap forward the 916 was in terms of design and performance. The design has been copied and bastardized ad-naseum to the point where a 916 looks good, but not unique. We mustn’t forget that in 1994 that people could scarcely believe how amazing and advanced it looked. The mechanical bits may have been evolutionary but the looks were revolutionary. It would become poster fodder for an entire generation of riders.
While the standard 916 “Strada” was hard enough to get, and provided scintillating performance, there was a need for something a bit hotter and more exclusive. Not for the sake of better performance so much as to homologate a tricked-out version of the 916 for racing. While the bread-and-butter models will keep the profits rolling, homologation specials are needed to ensure that the best possible components are available for the racing versions. Certain cheaty bits can be incorporated as well, if you aren’t planning on making it emissions or noise regulation compliant worldwide. As per Superbike rules, a minimum number of “street legal” models must be produced that feature the basic elements present in the fully prepped racer. Back in the 1990s it was common for manufacturers to build thousands of standard bikes, then a few hundred tricked out homologation specials, that shared little with the bog standard bike, at exorbitant prices to legalize special components for racing.


Before 2008 the rules for World Superbike were such that as little as 150 bikes could be produced to meet the requirements, while AMA Superbike in the USA only required 50. The legendary Yamaha OW01 and OW02 (aka the R7), as well as the Honda RC30 and RC45 - all were limited production specials to legalize race versions. You can’t take a standard version and then modify beyond recognition – a middle-ground compromise is needed to meet the rules (barely) and allow you to build a better race bike. The SP (for Sport Production) was that compromise.
...
Tune in next week for Part II of the 916 story. Same OddBike time, same OddBike place.




Ducati 916 SP/SPS - Ultimate Desmoquattro Superbikes - Part II

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One of the most famous pictures of a 1997 916 SPS, sold as a life-size poster by the Bullivant Gallery
 Part II of our profile of the Ducati 916 Sport Production series, the ultimate evolution of the Desmoquattro engine platform. 
Click here for Part I.

Ducati was no stranger to homologation specials, having built many versions of the 851 and 888 in various states of tune. Generally the formula was this: each year take some bikes off the production line and prepare them by hand to a higher degree of specification overall. Lightweight parts and carbon fibre bodywork would cut the weight, higher spec suspension and brakes would suspend it, and a massaged motor with hotter internals would fling it down the road. Maybe throw on some new Corsa spec parts to make them legal for the new season. Slap some lights on and get it homologated for street use in Europe (the US EPA was too strict in terms of noise and emissions) and bam, you’ve allowed your race team to upgrade some components for the new season. The 916 SP continued the tradition. It wasn’t as extreme as some of the previous specials (the 888 SPS was one of the most bonkers, vicious machines ever allowed onto a public road) but it was markedly improved over the standard Strada and was considerably more rare.

The SP was introduced in 1994 alongside the Strada. Most of the parts were shared with the standard bike – frame, front forks, brake calipers, wheels, most of the bodywork, and the cooling system were shared with the Strada. Outside of the motor the key difference were a smattering of carbon fibre parts, a Monoposto tail with a white numberplate paint scheme, a set of full floating cast iron brake rotors, and an Ohlins rear shock - which, as per Ducati practice at the time, might have ended up on a Strada anyway if that was all they had lying around in the parts bin on that day. If you were lucky and Giuseppe on the assembly line was feeling generous you might have gotten a carbon fibre airbox. Generally the specs of these mid 90s bikes vary quite a bit just because production was limited by parts supply, and the workers would use whatever bits were available to complete the day’s bikes. The 916 was more popular than Ducati could have imagined and production was stretched to the limit to meet demand, no mean feat considering a fire at the Bologna paint shop had forced them to move to temporary digs at the Cagiva Varese works.

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Note the smooth casting of the front cylinder head, poking through between the radiator and the oil cooler. This distinguishes the SP/SPS from a standard 916.
Ok, at first glance the SP wasn’t that special and could easily be mistaken for a standard model with a few parts from the Performance catalogue. It was only about 6 pounds lighter than the standard Monoposto. What was special was the work done to the motor. While it shared the gearbox, alternator and bore/stroke of the Strada motor, not much else was interchangeable. The crankcases were finished differently and had a rough cast texture, and inside you’d find reinforced main bearings. Look at the cylinder heads and you’d see they were based on the 916 Racing heads, cast without the usual “4V Desmo” text for an extra few millimetres of front wheel clearance. The clutch pack was unique to the SP, and the final drive was lowered with a 14 tooth front sprocket instead of the 15 tooth of the Strada. A high flow oil pump and forced lubrication to the gudgeon pins improved oil delivery at high RPMs. Con rods were Pankl titanium H-section. The crankshaft counterweights were lightened considerably. New pistons bumped up the compression ratio a smidge from 11:1 to 11.2:1. Valves were enlarged from 33/29mm to 34/30mm. Heads were ported from the factory. Up top you got G/A cams, some of the hottest camshafts ever fitted to a street legal Desmoquattro. The fuel injection throttle bodies were borrowed from the 888 SP5 and featured two injectors per cylinder mated to a P8 ECU, with a high-pressure fuel regulator to ensure adequate delivery at high RPM. The exhaust was unique, featuring 45mm headers ala Strada mated to a 50mm half system at the rear.

For 1994 the Strada was claimed to have 114 hp, while the SP had 126. Later revisions dropped the Strada to 109 and the SP up to 131, though no changes were made to either motor. In the real world you could expect the SP to knock out about 10 extra horsies at the rear wheel when put back to back with a Strada – standard 916s typically make 100-105 at the wheel while SPs knock out around 110-115. More important was how the character and power delivery of the motor was changed.


Standard 916s are quite peaky for a big twin. They don’t have much power below 5000 rpm and only really come on the cam around 7000. They are reasonably tractable and can be ridden leisurely, but to make real progress they need to be flogged a bit. The SP is far worse. With lighter internals and very high lift cams, it is a motor that needs to breath hard to make power and it spins up much faster than a Strada. Compare dyno graphs and a standard 916 is far more linear and will beat an SP up until about 6000 rpm, and things get interesting at 8000. That’s when the SP wakes up and takes off like a scalded cat up to redline. It's just like a normal 916, but turned up to 11. It makes for a more frenetic riding experience, but it also makes the SP feel a bit disappointing in everyday riding. It doesn’t feel considerably faster than a Strada/Biposto until you hammer it into the higher revs, and the everyday rideability is compromised by the extreme camshafts and lighter internals. 

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The 916 SP and its main competitor, the Honda RC45.

Handling is otherwise more or less the same as the standard bike. The Ohlins rear shock was a big improvement over the standard Showa unit and helped to improve roadholding and compliance quite a bit, but the basic characteristics of the 916 remained intact – which is good, because it was one of the finest handling machines of the time. Braking was improved slightly by the cast iron rotors, but the SP1 retained the mushy rubber brake lines of the Strada - later years got stainless lines to improve feel.

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1996 SP3 - note the numbered plaque on the triple tree.
310 SP1s were produced in 1994. 1995 saw the production of the SP2, which was largely unchanged - some sources claimed the expensive titanium con rods were dropped in favour of steel items, but this wasn’t universal. Another 401 examples were built. 1996 was the final year, with 497 SP3s rolling off the line. Thus the SPs are considerably rarer than the already scarce 916. Approximately one out of ten 916s produced between 94-96 was a SP. Finding one today in clean condition is miraculous, after a 15 years of attrition and track-bike conversions.
The rarest SP of all is the 1996 SPA (Sport Production America, sometimes called the 955SP), built in a run of 54 examples to homologate a set of 96mm pistons/barrels for use in AMA Superbike. Some sources quote a modified crankshaft and crankcases as well, but details are scarce. With the 2mm overbore capacity was 955cc, and engine numbers are modified to suit – a true SPA will have a ZDM955 engine code, an important thing to note because there are hundreds of “955s” that are simply 916s with aftermarket overbore kits. 50 were sold to the public, making it one of the rarest Ducatis of the 1990s. Aside from the pistons and barrels it is a standard SP3 with a decent power boost – Superbikemagazine tested a genuine 1 of 50 SPA in 1996 and it made 122 hp and 74 lb/ft of torque on their dyno with a custom exhaust and a remap. 

Few are aware of how special 916SPs are, mainly because in 1997 the legendary 916 Sport Production Special (SPS) was introduced and the SP faded into relative obscurity.


The SPS was released to homologate the new 996cc engine for Superbike competition. The previous 916 crankcases had been maxed out at 955cc, and had problems with cracking and stress fractures under racing conditions. New reinforced crankcases were needed, and to accommodate a displacement closer to the 1000cc limit for twins in Superbike the case mouths needed wider openings and wider stud spacing to match. Thus the barrels and heads were new, made wider to match the new cylinder stud spacing. Bore was now up to 98mm, with the same 66mm stroke as before. The heads had larger combustion chambers and bigger valves. Compression ratio was now 11.5:1. Inside you a lighter crankshaft with tungsten plug balancing. The high-pressure double injector fuel setup with P8 ECU was carried over from the SP.

A new set of camshafts was introduced, using principles learned from racing Desmoquattros. They had nearly the same lift as the G inlet cam (and more than the A exhaust cam) but with much shorter duration. The new motor retained the frantic, free revving character of the 916 and SP, but with a stout midrange punch. They were still high lift cams in the end, though, and low speed running, idling, and clean emissions were not the motor’s forte. Especially when you factor in the much lighter internal parts and their momentum. Lighter crank and rods makes for a motor that spins easily and builds revs faster, but with the lessened flywheel effect it won't idle particularly well. 

As such the SPS got a reputation as a thundering, maniacal motor that felt way stronger than the dyno numbers would suggest, with a barely-contained fury at lower speeds that made it a bear to ride in slow traffic. Every review reported stalling at idle. Just like any good 916, then. If you meet a 916 owner who claims they are smooth at low speed

and easy to ride in traffic, they are either lying or in the process of having a stroke.


To reduce strain on the primary gears a new lower ratio gear set was introduced. Transmission was now a close-ratio box, shared with the smaller 748. First and second were the same as a 916, but third though sixth were lower – so much so that 6th on the close ratio was the equivalent of 5th on the standard box.


In terms of chassis, it was more of the same. The standard Showa forks were retained, as was the Ohlins rear off the SP, ditto the Brembo brakes and cast iron rotors. Wheels remained triple-spoke Brembos. A full 50mm exhaust system was standard, and a set of “off road” Termignoni carbon fibre slip-ons were included. The same smattering of carbon fibre bits you’d find on a SP were present – which included the front fender, chain guard, front V-cowl, exhaust heat shield, under tail tray, license plate hanger, and (sometimes) the airbox. So much like the previous SP, the chassis, weight and handling were not far off from the standard bike but the motor was markedly improved.

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Reviews were stellar. While the SP was a bit disappointing to testers when they weighed the extra cost against the standard 916, the SPS was clearly a winner and worth the extra investment – if you could afford it, or even get your name on the waiting list. Price tag was around $24000 USD (1998), a healthy premium over the $16500 Biposto and nearly double the price of a 748, both of which were already expensive propositions. Regardless of the price tag, there was a lot of demand for the SPS. 404 examples were built in 1997, some being squirreled away by collectors without ever turning a wheel in anger.

Power claims were, as per tradition, all over the place. Ducati initially claimed the SPS made 134hp (with the “illegal” pipes that came with it), then later revised it to 123. Or maybe that was 120? No wait, this source says 121. But wait, it couldn’t be down on power compared to the 916cc SP, could it? Dyno sheets proved the mettle of the new engine by showing a nearly 20 horsepower boost over a standard 916, which was a 5-10 hp boost over a SP– provided you had installed those slip-ons and the accompanying EPROM chip, and then promised not to ride it on the street.


More important was that the torque was up significantly across the board, so the SPS wasn’t as gutless in the lower revs as the SP was. Some independent testers were able to crack 170 miles per hour with the Termi kit fitted, a stunning speed for a twin with “only” 120-odd horsepower at the wheel on a good day. All that and it sounded apocalyptic. Testers waxed lyrical about ridiculous shunt at any revs and second gear power wheelies, and a ferocious character that demanded and commanded respect. That merciless power delivery and snappy torque was enough to push the limits of the chassis and scare a few testers straight. 916s in general do not respond well to ham-fisted riding. With a violent motor and instant tire-shredding torque, SPSs are downright murderous if you don't treat them with the necessary respect. You have been warned. 

Despite being down on power compared to pretty much all the competition it felt stronger and faster than anything else on the road. It was the ultimate Desmoquattro and the best Ducati you could buy until they shoved a hot Testastretta motor in for the 2001 996R. 

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1998 SPS, note the simplified graphics and the modified front brake mounts with wider bolt spacing.
1998 saw a slight improvement in the form of a new, lighter frame that had a bit more flex engineered into it. The steering damper was now an Ohlins adjustable unit. A new set of brake calipers were introduced with wider axial mounts and more pad contact surface. Titanium con rods were now standard. The old Cagiva-era graphics were gone in favour of the new "Vignelli" decals, part of the the “out with the old” tweaking being done by new parent company Texas Pacific Group. Under TPG production was increased while quality control and component quality was improved. The SPS remained much like before, but in 1998 1058 machines were produced. Exclusivity was compromised, but quality was steadily improving.

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The infamous US-market 1998 SPS paperwork, including the original waiver and off-road-use-only MSO.
Problem was that the SPS was road legal in Europe, but not in the US. Ducati couldn’t be bothered to neuter the SPS enough to meet strict EPA noise and emissions regulations. But there are plenty of road-registered SPSs in North America, so what gives? A nice little loophole that allowed Ducati to sell the SPS as a track-only bike, not legal for road use. Despite the fact it had full street equipment. And a title. And a 17-digit VIN. Ducati had it all figured out – you could buy an SPS in the US of A as long as you signed a legal waiver that stated you promised not to register it for road use, despite the fact you totally could but you really shouldn’t because the EPA said so. And if you did do such a silly thing, you absolved Ducati of all legal responsibility for you riding a bike on public roads that hadn’t passed EPA testing. Butts. Covered.

Thus most every SPS imported into the US somehow got registered despite all those owners promising they wouldn’t. Oh well, it wasn’t Ducati’s fault - see, they have all these signed waivers. Not their problem.

In 1998 Ducati needed to homologate a new frame with a lowered cross brace to allow a larger airbox. Called a Kyalami frame, as it was introduced in the middle of the 1998 season at the Kyalami WSB race in South Africa, it allowed more room for a bigger airbox design that reportedly boosted horsepower considerably. To make the frame race-legal they needed to sell a street version, so the UK-only 916SPS Fogarty Replica was released. 202 were sold in Britain in honour of WSB rider Carl Fogarty; aside from the new frame, you got a set of five spoke Marchesini wheels and a race-replica paint scheme, as well as a few Foggy themed goodies, but otherwise it was standard SPS. Street bikes didn’t even benefit from a larger airbox. Why 202? Because one went to Fogarty and one remained in the factory museum, the remaining 200 were sold to the public. A second Foggy replica was released in 1999, this time 150 examples were made available in Europe, and a third run in 2000 of 147. The Foggy SPS was never officially sold in the US, but we did get the Foggy Monster S4 in 2001. 

The SPS begat the 996 Biposto and Monoposto models in 1999, which used a detuned version of the 996cc engine with Strada cams, a standard ratio gearbox, heavier crank and rods, a 1.6M computer, and a new three-phase 520-watt alternator. It was the bike that the SPS would have been - had it been forced to meet EPA standards. The 996 offered a midrange boost over the outgoing 916, but horsepower was only up a few ponies and it was nowhere near the level of the magnificent SPS, despite sharing the same displacement, crankcases, heads, valves and pistons. In Europe, you could still buy a 996SPS (note the name change) from 1999 to 2000, with steady component improvements over the years. A few were imported into the US as well but as before they aren’t technically road legal. The European spec 2001 996S also received the much-loved SPS mill, but the US version had to make do with a standard 996 engine.   

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1999 996SPS
  Today the SPS is one of the most desirable Ducatis of the modern era and command a big premium over standard models (but still far less than their original MSRP, unless you find an as-new never-ridden example). SPs are rare to the point of obscurity and are often overlooked in favour of the more common SPS, but are still very much worthy of consideration. They represent the pinnacle of the original Desmoquattro engine architecture, which was superceded by the more refined, reliable and powerful Testatretta engine in 2001. Bordi's design was in production for a remarkable 20 years, more impressive was that it was winning races from 1986-2000 despite always having a significant power deficit against the competition. It's a remarkable legacy, and the 916 SP and SPS remain impressive machines that command respect and demand finesse. In the right hands, on the right roads, or on a racetrack, they are astonishing machines.
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2000 996 SPS, the final year of production
Interesting Links
Kevin Ash's 1994 review of the 916
Visordown's comparison of the 1996 SP3 against the Honda RC45
A low mileage 1996 916 SPA for sale in the UK
An as-new, never ridden 1998 916SPS that was auctioned on eBay
Motorcycle.com's 1998 comparison of the 916 SPS against the Yamaha R1
Performance Bike review of the 1997 SPS
Can't afford the real deal? How about a life-sized poster of a 1997 916SPS?

Norton P86 750 Challenge - Norton's Last Gasp

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When we think of the death of the British motorcycle industry in the 1970s, we generally recall the final generation of cantankerous, leaky, vibrating, old fashioned crock-pots being foisted onto an increasingly apathetic market. These were conservative and under-engineered machines that harkened back to an earlier era of motorcycle design (and lax quality control). With the advent of oil tight, reliable, well built, and fine-riding Japanese motorcycles (with – gasp – electric starters), the writing was on the wall for most of the British marques. Some made a last-ditch attempt to stave off failure by hurriedly cobbling together something that might be competitive against the Japanese onslaught.
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Norton’s last-ditch effort was the remarkable, but virtually forgotten, P86 “Challenge” prototype built around a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam twin designed in partnership with famed engine builder Cosworth. It would prove to be too little, too late, and the entire project would become mired by traditional British engineering conservatism and a general lack of funding as the venerated Norton brand wheezed its final breaths.
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Let’s take a step back to the early 1970s. Norton was still capitalizing on the success of their Commando platform, which began as a quick prototype built around the antiquated 750 Atlas motor in a rubber-damped frame that isolated the rider from the (stupendous) vibrations of the big parallel twin. Even in the 1960s the Norton twin was considered an obsolete design, a creaky old motor that dated back to 1948 (and that wasn’t particularly groundbreaking back then, either). That original design was a 497cc mill, and subsequent years and attempts to remain competitive had packed on the cubes to bring the engine up to 745cc and finally 828cc. More displacement meant more power, but also more vibration from the paired cylinders and an increasingly stressed design that was overstretching the original design specs by a fair margin. The final 828cc versions actually detuned the power slightly to improve reliability - they made the same power as the earlier 745cc motors.
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The famous John Player Norton monocoque chassis, circa 1973, built around the antiquated pre-unit twin.
While sonorous and torquey, and potentially reliable if setup and maintained correctly, the Norton pre-unit twin was a dinosaur that was far from the cutting edge of motorcycle design. It was particularly disadvantaged in racing by the 1970s. Japanese competition was becoming fierce in production classes. Norton racers were down on power and had significant reliability problems. Their chassis designs were reasonably competitive and sometimes quite innovative - the famous John Player Nortonmonocoque designs achieved some success and had some impressively forward-thinking frame design. Problem was underneath all the trick bits was that tired old OHV, air-cooled, two valve per cylinder twin and its fragile pre-unit gearbox, clattering out 70 odd horsepower while the competition was getting into triple-digit power figures. Something more modern and more competitive was needed, for both the street and the track. 
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Norton approached Cosworth in 1973 to help build a modern powerplant that would serve as a new generation of motor for future street machines, as well as provide a competitive base for racing. They’d also have a proper motor to go along with their advanced monocque race chassis. Cosworth, in addition to being as British as polo injuries, was doing quite well in Formula 1 with its excellent Double Four Valve (DFV) V8 which had been developed in 1966. The idea was to use 1/4 of a DFV, which coincidentally would equal 750cc using the DFV’s bore and stroke, arranged as a parallel twin. It would be liquid cooled, have a modern four-valve head, dual overhead cams, and Cosworth-style flat combustion chambers. The design brief called for 65-75hp in street spec, and at least 100 hp in race tune. As the DFV made around 400-450hp from 2993cc, this seemed like a reasonable goal.
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Cosworth DFV V8
The boys from Northampton set to work developing an engine for what would be dubbed prototype 86, or P86. It was a liquid cooled parallel twin with a 85.6mm x 64.8mm bore and stroke, same as the DFV, giving 746cc. Dual overhead cams were driven off a single gear nestled between the two cams on the right side, similar to the DFV except that an automotive-style toothed timing belt drove the assembly. The DFV used a gear train to turn the cams, but this was noisy and required lubrication – the timing belt was a simple solution to both problems. A modern four-valve per cylinder head with DFV dimensions (shallow pent roof with 32 degree included valve angle, flat top pistons, large valve surface, wide ports) promised good breathing and combustion, the hallmark of Cosworth F1 motors which had hit upon the ideal formula for a modern flat combustion chamber design. Indeed, above the crankshafts there wasn’t much to distinguish the P86 from the DFV – they shared the same combustion chamber and head designs, and even used the exact same pistons and con-rods. There were literally Formula 1 parts inside the P86.  
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Norton, being Norton, wouldn’t leave the Cosworth team to its own devices and stipulated several anachronistic design features that would prove to hamper the design significantly. One such requirement was that the twin must be capable of running through a single source of carburetion to make passing emissions testing easier, which necessitated the “traditional” firing sequence. That meant a time-honoured 360-degree interval, with the pistons rising and falling as a pair like God, the Queen and Bert Hopwood intended. Which meant the usual stupendous amount of vibration you get from a big British twin shaking itself to pieces.
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But of course vibration was not acceptable in a modern design, so rather than attempt to change the firing interval and risk making it harder to tune for increasingly strict emissions laws, a dual counter balancer system was developed. Problem solved. Except the counter balancers needed to be 20 pounds. You also need a massive, heavy flywheel to maintain tractability (and hold an idle) on a big twin, and Norton insisted on sticking it between the crankpins in the centre of the engine, just like they and everyone else in Britain had always done - which precluded the possibility of a strong centre main bearing. Famed technical writer Kevin Cameron wrote a detailed technical analysis of the P86 in 1980 and noted that the engine weighed 195 lbs, with seventy-five pounds of that being rotating mass inside the engine. That’s a lot of inertia to overcome, especially for something that is supposedly a racing motor.
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The DFV was a fuel-injected design, and had downdraught ports that took advantage of the perfectly metered flow that fuel injection offers. The P86 had a similar port design, but it was fed by antiquated Amal carburettors – the ports needed to be level at their entry to keep the carburettor floats on an even keel, and then turned down sharply to meet the valves. Both the port design and the odd angle conspired against power and hampered the fuel delivery. And Norton wanted to stick a single carb on the street version!
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Tradition wins over modern engineering, in customarily British fashion. We’ve always done it this way, old boy, so how dare you suggest those Japs have a better idea. My family has been working for Nortrumpetbizzalocette for three generations; I think I ought to know a thing or two about building motorcycles.
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Norton wasn’t the only one complicating the process - Cosworth made things difficult as well. As per their practice with their F1 engines, Norton engineers and mechanics were forbidden from opening or adjusting anything inside the motor. Any repairs, maintenance or modifications were to be carried out by Cosworth techs alone. Having two sets of engineers, who don’t share information, working on a single project is a sure fire way to get stymied in a real hurry. 
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The end result was a motor that was certainly better than the old pre-unit twin, but far behind expectations. In top racing tune with twin carburettors they achieved about 90 hp on the test bench in peaky, breathless fashion - not what they had been hoping for. The massive amount of rotating weight inside the engine hindered response, while the massive weight of the motor itself meant it was never going to be as light as the Japanese competition. The lack of a centre main bearing limited potential rpms and increased flexibility of the crank. The belt driven timing was inaccurate and the belts themselves fragile. During his teardown of the P86 Kevin Cameron noted several odd design shortcomings, like a wholly inadequate crankcase ventilation system that was surely robbing valuable horsepower.
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Regardless of the shortcomings the project plugged ahead. A special chassis was developed that was virtually frameless, using the engine as a stressed member with vestigial supports for the subframe and steering head. The new bike was raced publicly for the first time at Brands Hatch in 1975… Well, to say it was “raced” is being generous. They showed up and promptly crashed into a multi-bike pileup that occurred on the first lap. This was the P86’s introduction to the public, after repeated delays, so despite the fact the accident wasn’t their fault it did nothing to aid the reputation of the supposed saviour of the British industry. Subsequent outings on the track had disappointing results, with the P86 “750 Challenge” falling far behind the much more powerful opposition. Some attempts were made at modifying the chassis to improve handling but it wasn’t enough to make up for the significant power deficit.

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Meanwhile, Norton was in dire financial straits and money to continue the project simply didn’t exist. There had never been enough funds to maintain the project in the first place. The company had been operating on borrowed time for years, and the P86 project had been in constant flux. Norton could barely keep solvent in the early 70s, particularly after the Combat engine disaster hurt their bottom line and their reputation, and by 1975 the end was near. Famed racer Phil Read offered to take over development, but upon further diligence he promptly withdrew his offer and declared the P86 was not going to be a winner without serious changes. Meanwhile Cosworth was committed to Formula 1 efforts and could not devote a great deal of energy towards a dying, chronically underfunded project like the P86. Circumstances were conspiring against the success of the P86.
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After months of labour difficulties and slumping sales, parent company Norton Villiers Triumph was split up in 1976. The main factories were closed and production of spare parts was taken over by an offshoot company dubbed NVT Engineering, who would also continue production of the Commando using the existing parts stock in 1977-78. The racing and test departments were disbanded, the prototypes gathering dust were sold off. The P86 was no more, and the existing bikes and spare engines (about 30 in total) disappeared into the ether.
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Well, most of them disappeared. Remarkably, the P86 would make a comeback ten years later at the 1986 Daytona Battle of the Twins as the Quantel, a trick machine powered by a “Cosworth” engine… which happened to be the old P86 engine - reworked, fuel injected, and punched out to 823cc. The Quantel would take second place in 1986, with a win in 1988, and would achieve some success in European BOTT venues as well. It seemed that with Norton out of the way and a few more years of development, the P86 could be made into a competitive racing platform. The story goes that when United Engineering Industries took a controlling interest in Cosworth in 1984, new chairman Robert Graves (founder of the Quantel media company in the UK) was being given a tour of the facilities by Keith Duckworth (the "worth" in "Cosworth"). Graves spotted the P86 engine sitting in a corner, and asked Duckworth about it. Duckworth declared "You're looking at the only engine we have built that has never won a race.". Apparently Graves saw this as a good challenge and promptly took the old engine, sunk another 100 000 pounds sterling into further development, hired John Surtees to help tune it, and made it competitive. Good press for Cosworth, not much help to Norton (who began building Wankel-rotary powered motorcycles from 1983 onward).
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The P86 “Challenge” faded into obscurity after the collapse of Norton Villiers Triumph in 1976 and today remains an interesting footnote in the history of the British motorcycle industry. Here was a genuine attempt at modernity that had high hopes tied to it. Some speculate that if the P86 had been developed earlier, when the British were still at the top of their game, the British motorcycle industry could have turned out very different… Could, would, should – didn’t. It was too little, too late, and the project was hampered by the traditional “we’ve always done it this way” attitudes and a severe lack of cash flow. Thus the British industry collapsed under its own hubris, Norton was broken up, and the P86 became a dusty relic of “what could have been”.
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Interesting Links
General history of Norton Motorcycles
Collection of photos of the P86, the Quantel, and the John Player Norton racers.
Kevin Cameron's technical analysis of the P86 engine.
The Quantel-Cosworth at the 1986 Daytona Battle of the Twins.
Period documentary about the John Player Norton racers.

The Irving-Vincent - Anachronistic Trackday Missile

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The Irving-Vincent
Let’s say you are the head of a successful engineering firm in Australia. You have a full compliment of advanced casting, prototyping and milling machinery at your disposal and years of R&D experience in various avenues. And you happen to be passionate about motorcycles.
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If you were like most people, you’d probably use the facilities at your disposal to build some trick bits, maybe even build a complete bike.
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If you were Ken Horner, you’d resurrect The Vincent and turn it into a category-smashing racing historic superbike that can, and does, blow the fairings off all comers.
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That’s the story of the Irving-Vincent in a nutshell. Ken and his brother Barry of KH Equipment began the Irving-Vincent as an after-hours exercise to demonstrate their engineering talents in a high profile, spectacular fashion. Few would have believed back in 1999 that Ken and his crew would bring back Vincent in a way that would stun everyone in the motorcycle racing scene who was unfortunate enough to get blown away by one of Ken’s creations. Here was a true-to-the-original recreation of one of the single most legendary motorcycles of the 20th century – updated with enough tech to make it staggering powerful and ridiculously quick round a track, to the point of competing against modern machinery. Despite using engine and frame architecture that dated back the 1930s.
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The Irving-Vincent story begins, naturally, with the original HRD Vincent Rapide and Black Shadow. The Vincent story is well documented, and I won’t repeat it here, but to summarize Phil Vincent bought the rights and tooling to defunct Howard Raymond Davies Motors in 1928 and set about developing his own brand of motorcycle. He hired Australian engineer Phil Irving to help develop an in-house engine design; originally an air-cooled 500cc canted-forward single (housed in models dubbed the Meteor and Comet), it was later developed into a 998cc V-twin that was released in 1936 as the Rapide, which would prove to be one of the most powerful motorcycles of the era. After the Second World War interrupted production, the Rapide was refined and developed and a new sportier variant introduced – the legendary Black Shadow. Production would cease in 1955 but the legend of the menacing, powerful, fast, and sure-footed Vincents terrorizing unsuspecting riders on backroads would only grow as the decades passed.
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Ken Horner was familiar with Vincents, having raced a sidecar outfit powered by a Vincent V-twin in the 1970s. He was also a fan of Phil Irving, and had the opportunity to chat with Irving about his V-twin design and its capacity for further development. Ken claims that the Irving-Vincent project began as a high-profile engineering exercise that would demonstrate the capabilities of his firm, as well as continue the ideas proposed by Irving. At the time he was producing air starters sold under the Austart name – functional and necessary, but hardly sexy and far from glamorous. So he set about developing a racing motorcycle that would showcase his talents and promote his company. Despite all its potential shortcomings (or maybe because of them?) he would use the antiquated Vincent V-twin as a basis for development. As the name “Vincent” was already trademarked, he called his bike the Irving-Vincent in Phil’s honour.
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A painting by Harry Whitver of the legendary Phil Irving.
The project began in 1999, when Ken began searching for suppliers of remanufactured Vincent engine components. Finding that parts were exorbitantly prices and insufficient for the goals he had in mind, he decided to build the engine from scratch with some help via Terry Prince Vincent in New South Wales. Ken designed and manufactured the bottom end components and crankcases at KHE, while TPV provided updated reproduction heads. Eventually KHE would take over the construction of the top end components as well. The new subsidiary would be (cheekily) named HRD - for Horner Race Development.
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The basic elements of the classic Vincent motor were retained – unit construction cases and internal oil passages of the B and C series bikes, as well as the 50 degree cylinder angle of those later models (Series A bikes had separate gearboxes and a narrower 47.5 degree vee). Like all Vincents the engine was air cooled and operated 2 overhead valves per cylinder via rocker arms driven by external pushrods. The trademark Vincent chassis design would be retained as well - Ken would continue to use the engine as a stressed member with a cantilever rear shock and minimalist box-section spine.
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The Period 5 category 1300cc racer.
Everything was updated aside from the basic elements of the design. Modern metallurgy, casting and milling allowed far stronger construction than was possible in the mid 20th century. Modern engine tuning techniques, with technology borrowed from Australian V8 Supercars and American NASCAR, would also allow for some competitive increases in power, while the stronger components would keep things in one piece on the track. Not worrying about dedication to the original nuts and bolts of the design (it’s a high performance replica, not a concours restoration) meant that KHE could push the performance envelope. Hard.
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Goodwood 2012
The Vincent’s original 998cc Rapide engine had produced 45 hp. The Black Shadow upped the ante to 55 hp. The racing-spec Black Lightning supposedly had around 70 hp.
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The first complete Irving-Vincent, displacing 1299cc via a 92x97.7mm undersquare design with a sky-high 14:1 compression ratio to run on a methanol mix, debuted in 2003 at the Geelong Speed Trials with around 135 hp. It also stumped out an impressive 110 lb/ft of torque. And that was only the beginning. KHE was just getting warmed up.
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Subsequent developments punched out the motor to 1571cc with a 100x100mm square ratio. Now the Irving-Vincent was knocking out 165 hp (at a leisurely 6500rpm) and 130 lb/ft. The latest version, featuring a four-valve, fuel-injected 1600cc engine (still with traditional pushrods but now operating a double-armed rocker on each side) made a staggering 186 hp, with a slightly higher rev ceiling than the 2-valve. As remarkable as these numbers are, Ken and the gang find them disappointing - they claim the outputs are almost 10% below their targets!
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The Irving-Vincent four-valve head.
The resulting bike is as beautiful as it is incongruous. There are several versions, ranging from semi-vintage to compete in Historic categories (with wire wheels, drums or old fashioned discs, and right-side-up forks) to full on Superbike spec to compete against modern machinery. Here you have that instantly recognizable Vincent lump hanging out in the wind (the external appearance is maintained, even if the the internals are thoroughly modern), surrounded by state-of-the-art chassis components and simple cafe-style bodywork. Semi-dry weight is around 385 pounds, ready to race they are right around 400.  It's reminiscent of an Egli-Vincent, but much more modern - on the Daytona bike each end is suspended by top-shelf Ohlins hardware, with magnesium wheels and massive radial mount AP brakes. And of course the Egli has no chance of keeping up with the staggering performance of the Irving. 
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The most recent evolution of the 1600cc Irving-Vincent, which is supposed to be entered into the upcoming 2013 Daytona BOTT.
A small nose fairing keeps wind off the rider, but the engine is left out in the open with only the (required) oil-catch bellypan obscuring the view of the mechanical bits. Despite the lack of streamlining the 1600cc bikes are capable of nearly 170 mph. The open look is partly due to the retention of the Vincent backbone frame, which in the Irving-Vincent doubles as the oil tank. The result is a remarkable machine that has modern components built around a classic style that is as beautiful as it is functional. It's the dream of many a modern cafe-racer builder to take a vintage mill and build a modern chassis around it. Few do it as successfully as Irving-Vincent, fewer still will make it handle like Ken does, and almost no-one will be able to extract the same kind of performance from a vintage motor as KHE does. And that's not mentioning the spine-tingling sound of an Irving-Vincent, which sounds more like an unmuffled V-4 than a big pushrod twin.    
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Such was the performance of the Irving-Vincent that it quickly outgrew the vintage categories it was eligible to compete in. There aren't many bikes in Vintage categories than can knock out 100 plus horsepower, so the Irving-Vincent quickly dominated the category in Australia despite some stiff competition - Australian vintage categories are far from the gentle lapping of restored machinery we see in North America. Ken was planning on campaigning the Irving-Vincent in a Florida vintage speed trial, but upon examining the competition he quickly realized he would utterly decimate the opposition. There was no contest whatsoever - and no challenge. So Ken scrapped that idea and aimed for a bigger target - the Daytona Battle of the Twins race, where he would compete in the AHRMA Formula 1 unlimited category. He set about preparing a racer with modern suspension, brakes and wheels and a highly tuned version of his Vincent twin.
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Daytona-goers were stunned to discover what appeared to be an honest-to-go Vincent in the paddocks, complete with the traditional black and gold livery. A closer inspection would reveal the modern, top tier engineering present, as well as the subtle "Made in Australia" tag cast into the crankcases - if they didn't notice the Australian flag hanging off the rearsets. Entry 888 was to prove a surprise in many respects. Not many people outside of Australian racing were aware of what Ken was up to, and what his machines were capable of. So here was what appeared to be a 1940s-50s engine hung in a minimalist frame with some high-spec suspension bits bolted to it about to go head-to-head with highly-developed Ducatis, NCRs, and Moto-Guzzis.
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Once it was out on the track, it was clear that the Irving-Vincent was something special. Because damned if it didn't win outright on its first outing at Daytona, against far more "modern" performance machinery. It was a shock to the traditional pecking order and took the crowds by surprise. Not only was it an apparent anachronism, but it was developed, built and tuned by a few guys working independently in Australia. No works team, no big backers, and only a few years of development in club racing on the other side of the world. The Daytona winning bike toured various events and venues, including a high-profile visit to and parade lap at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2011 and 2012. Plans were made to return to Daytona with a 1600cc four-valve machine, but so far nothing has come of it. Aside from their high-profile victory at Daytona, Irving-Vincents have successfully campaigned in Australian Superbike Historic and various vintage racing categories, with wins in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
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Irving-Vincent is still around, operating quietly and developing their bikes in relative obscurity with the odd news update on their website. This isn't a surprise when you consider that it is a sideline for KHE - it is surprising that they find the time to develop and race their bikes as much as they do. They continue to compete in historic racing and stun crowds with their thundering anachronism, a magnificent testament to Phil Iriving's sound design and the engineering prowess of Ken Horner. The Irving-Vincent is indeed a high-profile showcase of KHE's capabilities - so in that regard, mission accomplished.

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Ken and Barry Horner with the 1300cc Period 4 category Irving-Vincent.

Yamaha A-N-D FFE 350 - Forkless Two-Smoker

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As far as motorcycle design goes, manufacturers tend to err on the side of conservative engineering. Stick with what is known, what is common, what is produced in great quantity and with known characteristics. This is especially true in suspension design. With the current proliferation of so-called “conventional” telescopic forks, it’s quite easy to forget that there are hundreds of alternative front suspension designs, many of which address the key weaknesses of traditional forks with distinct performance advantages.
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One man sought apply the principles of a forkless front suspension in a bike of his own design. He designed it, refined it, and built it himself. Julian Farnam is the type of builder who inspires accolades and envy – here is a man who, with minimal resources aside from his own talents, built an advanced and beautiful one-off that looks like a priceless factory prototype produced by a massive R&D department. That bike is the FFE 350, a stunning custom bike based around the engine of a Yamaha RZ350 which recently wowed crowds at the One Motorcycle Show in Portland, Oregon. While it has recently been garnering attention on the web among motorcycle geeks, Julian has been tinkering with the FFE and forkless designs since the early 90s.
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But first, lets talk about forks. Today’s telescopic dampers were just one of many solutions that were tried out in the early days of motorcycle design. Racing quickly improved the breed and weeded out the ineffective designs, and telescopic forks with hydraulic damping came out the winner by the 1950s. Despite their advantages and decades of intense development, telescopic forks still have significant weaknesses. The most obvious is flex. Having two spindly tubes holding the front wheel out at an angle, with three relatively small clamping points (axle, top and lower triple) means that there is a great deal of lateral movement inherent in conventional forks. Upside-down designs improve rigidity, as do oversized triple clamps and fork braces, but flex can never be entirely engineered out of the design – it needs to be accommodated and compensated for.
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In terms of performance, the design of conventional forks is such that bumps are constantly altering the geometry of the front end. As the forks compress, they shorten, and the wheel moves up and back, which changes the trail of the bike. Braking and acceleration also alters the geometry due the angle of the forks. The horizontal forces exerted by braking compress the fork, the front end dives, the weight pitches forward, and you load up the front tire. Not ideal, but we've grown accustomed to the shortfalls and learned to tune and ride around them. 
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Conventional forks pivot around a single stem in the headstock, which necessitates a beefy frame with a large spine (or heavy perimeter spars) to brace and channel the considerable forces coming from the front end. The modern frame has evolved around this need – you have a round steering head attached high in the front to a set of tubes or beams which then channel forces into the rest of the frame, or through the engine cases if the motor is a stressed member. With a front swinging arm design, you can practically engineer that bulky frame right out of the equation: you simply need a relatively minimal spar that connects the front and rear suspensions together, ala Bimota Tesi or Yamaha GTS1000 which bolt frame plates to the lower sides of the motor. Steering is through an unstressed linkage that connects the handlebars to the front swingarm. You end up with a simpler and stronger frame, better mass centralization, less weight, and fewer flex points in the chassis.
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Tony Foale prototype.
Several engineers experimented with alternative front suspension designs in the 1980s and 90s, with some manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon. Bimota developed a hub-centre steering setup for the 1990-94 Tesi which would become the prototypical funny-front-end production bike and spawn the subsequent 2D, 3D and Vyrus designs. Yamaha famously adopted James Parker’s RADD swingarm design for their under-rated GTS1000 in 1993. Meanwhile Honda and ELF experimented with single-sided front and rear swingarms in racing during the 1980s and 90s. BMW has perhaps been the most open-minded company when it came to developing an alternative front suspension on a road bike - they have been producing their Telelever (Saxon-Motodd design) front ends since the 1990s and their Duolever (Hossack design) setup since 2004.
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Tony Foale is one of the most prolific inventors of alternative suspensions, having built numerous functional prototypes over several decades. Foale experimented with different geometries and swingarm arrangements, finally settling on a design that combined an upright steering arm like a Hossack fork with a swinging arm that resembled the ELF Honda single-sided design acting on a single shock. Foale described his setup as a compromise between the two designs that offered advantages over both. The arms are arranged in a parallelogram with a tube linkage running through a pivot and then connecting to the controls. This basic arrangement would serve as the inspiration for Julian’s FFE design.
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Julian has been a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast. He began riding at age 12, when his dad bought an old Rupp minibike from Julian's uncle. After a few years of off-road riding, he got an RD250 on his 16th birthday. So began a life long love of street-going two-strokes. So it is only natural that during his stint studying Transportation Design at the Art Centre College of Design in California he would gravitate towards two-wheeled projects while most of his classmates remained dedicated to the four-wheeled variety. It was here that Julian cut his teeth with motorcycle design and alternative front suspensions. As part of a Yamaha sponsored design class, students were given pre-production Zuma scooters to modify. Some built non-functioning design studies, but Julian took the project a step further - he built a forkless front suspension, designed the scoot like a futuristic off-road machine, and made it a fully functional prototype dubbed the Recon.
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The next step was to build a real bike based on his principles for an alternative front suspension. Something a bit sexier than a scooter. This being 1990, the performance-minded enthusiast had two options - a big, heavy four-stroke or a lightweight, rip snorting two-stroke. Julian chose the latter, not surprising considering his long relationship with two-strokes. He began building his chassis around a liquid-cooled Yamaha RZ350 mill, the king middleweight street 'smoker of the day.
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The project began on pen and paper - in those days CAD programs weren't accessible unless you had access to an advanced R&D department with a big budget. Julian worked on the project in his spare time, with a bit of help.
"I was living in a small apartment in San Francisco with no shop or garage, but found a few people who were very generous with their time and resources. One of those people was Derek Capito of MotoLab in Redwood City who let me come and work in his shop in the evenings. That's where fabrication of the bike began. The design office were I was working at the time had a wood-working shop in the basement and I would also work there in the evenings creating the match-boards (patterns) and core-boxes that would be used in creation of the many aluminum casting that would become the various suspension components."  
What was supposed to be a one year project stretched into two, then three, four... It wouldn't be until 1996, after nearly seven years of work, that the FFE would be ready for primetime.
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 A custom twin-tube cradle frame was built without a headstock or backbone, with gusseted brackets where the front suspension components would mount. A vestigial headstock is mounted on a separate subframe to carry the controls and instruments. The result looks remarkably "stock" to the point where people mistakenly believe it is a modified RZ frame. The rear swingarm was taken from the FZR400RR with a milled two-piece Kosman rear wheel and a Fox shock. The front suspension would be patterned to resemble the rear - similar construction would be used on the front swingarms, another Fox shock would suspend it, and a replica of the Kosman wheel would be made.

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As the FFE uses a single-sided front swingarm, there was the issue of accomodating the brakes. If you have double sided arms you can retain the standard brake discs mounted on either side of the wheel. But on a single-sided arm you are limited to a single disc mounted on a stub axle, like you'd find on a car. Julian wanted top braking performance, so a single disc would not be adequate. His solution was ignenious - fabricate a hub that carried two discs running parallel to each other, with a single oversized caliper shared between them. He built the hub and mounted it with a pair of FZR rotors on full floating buttons, then had a custom automotive style six-piston caliper designed by Performance Machine with a three pad setup. A doubled-sided pad sits between the rotors, with the usual piston driven pads on either side. When the caliper squeezes the outer pads, the floating rotors get clamped together, sandwiching the third pad in between - two rotors, one caliper, with braking power to spare.
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Julian cites Foale, Parker and Nico Bakker as his inspirations for the front end design. The overall design is based on Foale's principles, with a large upright steering arm connected to the controls via an A-arm and a series of linkages running through a simple bell crank mounted above the engine, under the gas tank. Where Julian's design differs is in his use of doubled, parallel linkages. At first glance they might seem redundant, but they serve an important purpose. The bane of forkless systems is slack and slop in the various linkages and bearings, which are far more numerous than on a telescopic front end. Any free play is magnified and channeled up to the rider, resulting in sloppy controls and vague steering. Julian's solution was to have parallel linkages with a slight amount of tension in them, acting against each other, to remove the slack from the system. Apparently this relatively simple solution is quite effective, and the FFE has very precise steering for a forkless design.
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At first glance you could easily mistake the FFE for a factory prototype*, such is the level of detail and skill put into the project. And this is precisely what Julian was aiming for:

"My design intent in addition to experimenting with some of my own suspension ideas, was to create a motorcycle that looked like a factory made bike. I went to great effort to use the same materials and manufacturing methods on the custom parts as used on the factory made parts. If the rear swingarm was made with sand castings welded to sections of sheet aluminum, then my front swingarm needed to be made the same way. That is also why the current paint scheme looks like something Yamaha would have done. I want this bike to look like a modern RZ350 rather than just another bike customized in someone's garage."       

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The bodywork retained this OEM look, via a standard RZ tank and a Ducati 916 tail modified to suit the design. The bike was left unfaired, so the clever engineering of the front suspension is on display for all to see. The result weighed around 350lbs, with all the stomping performance you'd expect from an RZ. Julian says that he could probably pare down the weight, especially the unsprung mass on the front end - he overbuilt many of the components to ensure safe operation, but the availability of modern CAD design and computer stress modeling means that he could simultaneously lighten and strengthen his design.
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The proof is in the riding, and the FFE performed remarkably well. Julian took the machine to several trackdays and offered it up for testing. It was driven in anger on three occasions, with excellent results at each outing. Julian proudly notes that Tom Dorsey turned in some potential 450 Superbike-winning times at Button Willow, not mentioning the praise the riders gave for the design. Julian described the characteristics of the FFE:
"In a nut shell, it rides very much like a conventional modern bike. Its very stable at high speed, yet will flick into corners very quickly. The road feed back is excellent due to the redundant linkage system which virtually eliminates any free-play in the steering connections. The one noticeable difference is a lack of nose dive under hard breaking. When applying the front brakes, the front will dip a little because of weight transfer, but won't compress radically like a conventional bike might do if you grab a handful of front lever. This is particularly nice in that you can make speed adjustments mid-corner and the bike won't stand up or do anything weird. Its a very fun bike to ride."
Anyone who had ridden a Duolever BMW will be familiar with that lack of front end dive, which can be disconcerting at first but quickly becomes an advantage - you can brake harder and with more confidence than on a telescopically suspended machine.
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After finishing the FFE Julian started his own frame company, dubbed A-N-D Vehicles, to offer racing chassis kits for Kawasaki EX500 twins called the AK-1. While the FFE was an impressive piece of engineering and a showstopper, it wasn't a viable design for production. The AK-1 was a more conventional chassis that had broader appeal - it was a trellis frame and swingarm that used the venerable 500cc parallel twin to build a relatively inexpensive but effective racer for AFM 500cc twins categories. The AK-1 kit allowed the builder to use modern sportbike suspension, wheels and brakes taken off popular bikes, something that would normally require a lot of modification to fit the stock EX (not the mention the fact that the EX frame and swingarm were obsolete designs dating back to the mid-1980s). For $3250 you got a frame and swingarm, while a $4750 kit included a subframe, rear wheel hardware, and various brackets to complete the machine. Quality was apparent, and there were definite shades of Bimota in the brightly painted trellis spars mated to milled alloy rear plates. The AK-1 competed in AMA Pro Thunder and AFM Twins, with some notable victories in AFM - A-N-D framed bikes took 2nd and 3rd in 2001 and won the championship in 2002. Unfortunately the venture didn't succeed, despite the good results and praise from seasoned racers.
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Today Julian works for Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco as a mechanical engineer, but he still finds time for two-wheeled contrivances. He recently completed a cosmetic refurbishment of the FFE 350 to put it back on the road after several years of disuse, which included a new paint job as well as the addition of some street equipment so he could ride it on the road. He continues to build custom machines in his spare time, and has crafted some interesting projects. He has participated in the "Dirtbag Challenge" where one must heavily modify a bike within 30 days for under 1000$ (including the cost of the bike). Last year he managed to cobble together a leading-link chopper RD400 that he exhibited alongside his FFE at the One Motorcycle Show.
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Julian Farnam is one of those talented tinkerers who work in relative obscurity, occasionally displaying their brilliance to the outside world but generally operating independently and for their own amusement. I felt compelled to profile the FFE 350 to publicize Julian's creativity and share his story with a wider audience. Julian is a talented builder who does what many of us dream about, and what American hot-rod culture celebrates - successfully reinventing the wheel in our garage, in our spare time, with our own hands and some creative thinking. The FFE 350 is a testament to Julian's forward thinking and the quality of his engineering - it is still striking enough to turn heads 17 years after it debuted.  
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*I was fooled myself, and incorrectly reported it as a modified Yamaha prototype on the OddBike Facebook page. My initial research led me to Julian's rebuild thread on the CustomFighters forum - my immediate reaction was "how did a streetfighter builder get his hands on a priceless factory prototype?". Upon further investigation I discovered that Julian was in fact the designer, engineer, and builder behind the project. Shortly after I contacted him to get more background on the FFE and his philosophies, which became the genesis of this profile. I want to thank Julian for his input, and give kudos to him for building one of the neatest bikes I've seen in a long while. 

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Interesting Links

Vyrus Motorcycles - Hub-Centre Perfection

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Last week we featured the FFE 350, a heavily modified forkless Yamaha RZ350 built by engineering virtuoso Julian Farnham. In keeping with a forkless-front-end theme, this week we will be profiling the most exotic and advanced hub-centre steering designs of all time – the Vyrus.
If you want to re-invent the proverbial wheel in the motorcycle industry, it seems that the most popular place to start is the front suspension. Dozens of companies have fielded hundreds of prototypes and the odd production model that eschews the conventional telescopic fork for something more effective. It seems that every few years an iconoclastic design emerges to tip the motorcycle world on its head and correct the flaws of the traditional fork. One of the most striking (and difficult to execute) alternative suspensions is the hub-centre steered front wheel, and the undisputed current king of the hub-centre design is Vyrus, based in Coriano, Italy.
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Ascanio Rodorigo was a Bimota technician who joined the famous boutique brand early on as a racing mechanic in the 1970s. He left the company in 1985 to form his own manufacturer, called ARP, where he produced custom components for racing motorcycles. This experience is what allowed him to develop one of the most advanced and avant-garde motorcycle designs of the modern era. He did the unthinkable – build a bike that was so exclusive and so desirable that it would make a typical Bimota owner green with envy, Not only that, he built a bike so amazing that Bimota themselves licensed it for resale under their brand name.
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But first, lets look at a bit of history and technology. Last week we profiled the FFE 350 which featured a forkless front suspension steered via a Foale’s type design. While the FFE is forkless, it is not a hub-centre steering design, nor is James Parker’s RADD suspension – those are steered upright designs. A hub centre suspension uses the same principles as a forkless front end (using a swinging arm and shock to suspend the front wheel) but the wheel itself is maneuvered via a king pin in the axle hub that yaws the front wheel from side to side when it is rotated forward and backwards via a push-pull linkage. The wheel pivots around the central axis of the wheel itself. You get the same benefits as any other swinging arm front suspension – no dive or squat or stiction, you isolate the steering from braking and accelerating forces, very little lateral flex, and you can make a lighter and more minimalist chassis because you aren’t channeling suspension forces into the headstock. The only drawbacks are complexity, unfamiliarity, a wide steering lock, and a vague feeling if there is any freeplay in the various bushings and bearings.
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Hub-centre steering on motorcycles is not a new concept – it has existed in two-wheeled designs for nearly a century - the Ner-a-Car of the 1920s had a simple hub-centre design. The best-known modern production example, and the inspiration for the Vyrus, is the Bimota Tesi.
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The Tesi 1D was introduced in 1991 under the technical direction of Pierluigi Marconi and wowed riders the world over with its radical suspension setup and high-tech components, not to mention its exorbitant price tag. Marconi had developed the hub-centre design in 1982 as a design thesis (hence the name, Tesi is Italian for Thesis). The design was based on the Difazio hub-centre assembly, which uses a floating axle riding through a king pin inside an oversized front hub. Several prototypes were built and tested through the 1980s, including one that used a Honda V4 and hydraulic steering assistance. The production version was announced in 1987 but delayed until 1991 by financial difficulties (a common occurrence at Bimota). The production model that was unveiled in 1991 ditched the V4 and complex hydraulic arrangement for a simpler approach – tuned Ducati Desmoquattro L-twin and mechanical linkages with no assist. The 1D saw several updates over the years, finally finishing production in 1996 as Bimota geared up to build the infamous V-Due.
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The original Tesi was flawed but served as inspiration for Rodorigo who developed an updated hub-centre design in 2002. This machine would become the Tesi 2D “Millenium”, introduced in 2004-05 when the brand was resurrected (for a second time). He adapted the principles of the 1D but simplified the overall design. The engine was now an air-cooled Ducati Desmodue 1000DS twin. The suspension was refined and tweaked to improve on some of the complaints leveled at the original Tesi. The suspension was damped by a unique springless air assist shock mounted on the side of the bike, pivoting off the distinctive Omega frame spars that used the engine as a stressed member. Styling was decidedly modern and in keeping with Bimota’s new aesthetic direction – gone were the soft curves and enveloping fairings of the 80s and 90s, here were sharp angles and naked engineering. The Tesi 2D was a spectacular industrial beauty that wore its mechanical bits on the outside for all to see.
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If you read the press reports carefully, you’ll note that while the 2D was announced, presented and promoted as a Bimota, Rodorigo and his “VDM/Vyrus” brand were credited with the design, which was being licensed to Bimota. In fact the Vyrus 984, named for the tuned 984cc Ducati twin it used for motivation, had been around since 2003. If anything, Bimota’s involvement served as a way to promote Vyrus as a viable manufacturer and develop a demand for the stunning work emerging from Rodorigo’s garage. It was clear that Vyrus was not some fly by night operation showing off a vaporware product – this was the real deal, and it was impressing testers around the world. Without Bimota homologating the bike for road use and providing it to journalists for review, getting placement on magazines covers all over the world. With demand growing fast, Rodorigo set about refining his design and developing new variants.
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Vyruses are produced in what would be best described as an atelier. The “factory” has an R&D department, prototyping workshop, spares warehouse, assembly floor, offices, and a loading dock. All within the footprint of an average motorcycle dealership, and not an especially big one at that. It makes Bimota look cumbersome in comparison. And it emphasizes the unhurried, bespoke approach Vyrus takes when assembling bikes. They aren’t churning out production models for showrooms. They build individual bikes to order, and no two bikes are the same.  
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You can order any Vyrus you like from the catalogue, in any specification you please. The basic model is the 984 C3 2V, based on a classic air-cooled Ducati 1000DS motor. Next up is the 985 C3 4V, which upped the ante with a Testastretta liquid-cooled engine taken from a Ducati 999R. Once the 999cc motor became old hat, they introduced the 987 C3 4V with the 1198cc Testastretta Evo engine out of a 1098R. The basic chassis is shared between all the models. But this only tells half the story.
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Options are limitless and every machine is built to order, in consultation with the owner. Rodorigo will personally guide the buyer through his or her options, which are mind boggling. Would you prefer titanium axles and bolts? Maybe you’d like some carbon fibre oil cooler hoses? How about carbon ceramic brakes? They will even custom map the engine to suit your riding style (and skill level). Every single element of the bike is customizable, so no two Vyruses are the same and every machine is tailored to suit the owner. Retail prices are moot, because that is only the starting point. Needless to say, they are terrifyingly expensive, starting around 60-odd thousand excludingoptions.
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It’s a lot of money for a bike, but when you witness the quality involved you simply can’t criticize. Rodorigo is proud to say every single metal component – nuts, bolts, assemblies, axles – is CNC milled from solid. The company coordinates with over 250 suppliers as well as prototyping and making specialized components in-house, a staggering accomplishment when you consider the whole operation is comprised of five people. Every piece is of the highest quality and the finished bikes, regardless of the specification, are absolutely mesmerizing to look at. Every single component is a work of art, coming together to form an abstract rolling sculpture that sounds like the end of the world and looks like a science fiction creation. The design is not for everyone. People who are dead inside might think it’s a bit ugly, while anyone with a pulse and an eye for detail will be utterly gobsmacked by a Vyrus.
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Performance is as impressive as the components. Vyrus is famous for its incredulously lightweight machines. Rodorigo is quick to point out that his “dry” weight measurements are obtained with all the fluids and the tires installed, only the gasoline is omitted. So when Vyrus quotes 330lbs for the 984 and 350lbs for the 985/987, they mean it. That excludes optional lightweight components like carbon fibre wheels and subframes – there is always room for improvement, if your wallet can sustain it.
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If the 184hp, 350lb 987 4V R isn’t hot enough for you, Vyrus will install a low-pressure Lysholm-type twin-screw Volumex supercharger to boost the motor up to 211hp. In 2010, the 987 Kompressor was the most powerful production bike on the market, not mentioning that it had the best power to weight ratio of anything this side of a formula one car. Only the absolutely bonkers price-upon-application NCR M16 was able to surpass the Kompressor in the absurd, eyeball flattening power-to-weight ratio competition, and NCR resorted to using a tuned Desmosedici RR V4 to pull that off.
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But what about that advanced chassis and hub centre front end? After all, that’s the Vyrus’ real claim to fame. Reviewers heaped the expected praise on the design – stable, undisturbed by dive or squat, and generally very impressive to ride once you got used to the characteristics. They even reported good feedback and feel from the front end, which is high praise for a hub centre design. The only gripe was limited steering lock due to the narrow width of the front swingarm.
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Early versions shared the Tesi 2Ds air assisted shocks but later versions abandoned the system for conventional coil-spring designs. In either case the shock is mounted via a rising rate linkage. The chassis is clearly inspired by the Tesi 1D, with box section aluminum swingarms at both ends connected via a billet Omega frame spar bolted to either side of the engine. Two simple subframes are bolted onto that, one for the seat, the other to support the controls and instruments. The front end has two ball-jointed torque arms connected to the brake caliper mounts, with the steering linkage on the right side connected to a bell crank on the right hand frame spar. Geometry is fully adjustable. The handlebars are arranged like a traditional set of clip-ons around a vestigial top triple. I only mention the controls because with a hub-centre design there is no need to maintain the traditional layout. It could use a joystick for all that it matters. But some familiarity with tradition is probably needed, lest they alienate anyone reared on common bikes.   
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 In 2011 Vyrus made a surprise bid to join the new Moto2 category by designing a new bike around the series-spec Honda CBR600RR powerplant. The 986 M2 appeared similar to the Ducati-powered offering at first glance, but had some clear differences. The hub-centre front end was retained, but with a new swingarm and a hydraulically assisted adjustable steering linkage. A new frame was developed around the inline four, and it was clothed in a new set of bodywork. Two versions were offered – a race-ready model with top spec components for a little under $90 000 USD, and a street legal variant for around $40 000. An engineless kit was in the works for around $27 000, certainly the smartest option considering you can’t swing a dead possum without hitting a salvage CBR600 up for grabs. 

Unfortunately there were no takers for the Moto2 venture and the company sold off the prototypes in 2012 - but not before Vyrus designed a new front suspension assembly that incorporated what appears to be a steered upright. Why they did this is not clear, and there hasn’t been any recent details on this new suspension design. The Ducati-powered 984/985/987 models continue to use the original design.


Perhaps strangest of all was the MiniVyrus project sold via LRG minibike specialists in Italy. The MiniVyrus 07 EV was a miniaturized hub-centre design build around a 40cc two-stroke pocketbike. Details are scant, but it is clear a few examples were built (including one housed in the Barber Motorsports Museum) and that they were stupendously expensive (as you'd expect) for a minibike at well over 5000$. 

Vyrus continues to operate quietly, working on their backlog and building some of the most spectacular bikes on the market. The most recent model is the 984 Ultimate Edition announced (well, one was built and offered for sale) this year, which maxes out the trick parts to reduce weight to a scarcely believable 317lbs. That’s for a 992cc bike that is street legal, complete with lights, mirrors and a starter motor. The only way you’ll get a Ducati in that weight range is by stealing a WSBK-spec RS machine from the paddocks and duct taping flashlights to the fairing.

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Ascanio Rodorigo has gone from his humble wrench-spinning beginnings at Bimota and built his Vyrus concept into an exclusive marque that produces some of the most jaw-droppingly incredible street-legal motorcycles you can purchase and stick a license plate onto. The unique hub-centre steering design developed by Rodorigo and used on all his bikes is only one element of the innovation he offers. His philosophy, of constant innovation and the use of the finest components possible, are reflected by his company motto: "Questa è la mia sfida!" which translates to "This is my challenge!".

Moto Guzzi MGS-01 - Cooking Goose

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Booming Italian twin-cylinder trackday terrors have generally been the specialty of Ducati over the last 30 years; you might picture the odd orange Laverda parallel twin thrown in when that company is flirting with solvency, but generally Ducati is the go-to Latin track machine. Rarely do you picture a big, air-cooled, transverse V-twin out of Mandello de Lario thundering out of a corner and scything past the opposition. Moto Guzzi generally presents an air of staunch traditionalism, a sort of Italian BMW that is somehow more passionate than the Munich brand but far more rational than the exuberant offerings from Bologna. Guzzi riders are weathered, skilled old men who thump along the backroads, do their own repairs, and generally abstain from high-speed shenanigans. Or at least that’s the stereotype, one that was briefly blown into the weeds by the spectacularly uncharacteristic MGS-01 Corsa.
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For a brief period in the mid-2000s the MGS-01 (Moto Guzzi Sport model number one) was held high as the future of Moto Guzzi – a paradoxical break from tradition that upheld the time-honoured Guzzi design values. It was fast, beautiful, exclusive, expensive, and inspired much desire among red-blooded riders with an affinity for Italianate machines. It was a tantalizing glimpse at a more exotic and sporting direction for Moto Guzzi that ultimately was not to be.
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During this period the most sporting Guzzi you could purchase was the V11 Sport, which was more of a heavyweight café-racer than a true sports bike. The MGS-01 owed more of a debt to the earlier Daytona 1000, one of the most focused sports Guzzis of all time that was developed in partnership with legendary Guzzi tuner Dr. John Wittner.
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One of the Wittner-prepared Le Mans endurance racers
Dr. John, as he was affectionately called around the paddocks, was famed for using inappropriate equipment to compete at the highest level of production racing. A Pennsylvania dentist by trade, but trained as an engineer, Wittner was a stalwart Guzzi fanatic who believed that with sufficient development a classic air-cooled big-block Guzzi twin could win races against more modern machinery. He developed a series of racers that competed in Superbike classes in the 1980s with remarkable success considering their specification – he insisted on tuning the existing air-cooled, pushrod, transverse V-Twin, using the traditional drive shaft. His first successes were in fact with tuned production Le Mans models that were quite successful in endurance racing, which inspired Wittner to abandon his dental practice to focus on racing. After much development the result was a thundering bruiser of a racer that looked ungainly compared to the lithe opposition, but had the performance and the handling to win and stun the competition that never imagined they could be overtaken by a goddanged Guzzi built by a polite dentist from New England.
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Dr John and the Daytona
Wittner subsequently joined the Moto Guzzi factory and helped develop a modernized, but still unmistakably Guzzi, engine for a limited-production superbike. After years of secretive development the Daytona 1000 LE was released in 1993, and received mixed reactions. Here was the fastest, sportiest, and most powerful street-legal Guzzi ever produced… which wasn’t saying much. The last great sports machine Guzzi had introduced was the Le Mans, which had been on the market so long it couldn’t keep up with the goalposts – it had gone from being a cutting edge sport machine to a stately gentleman’s express by virtue of the fast development of the Eastern competition. The Daytona was like a modern Le Mans – long wheelbase, quite a bit of weight for a sport bike, with a motor that had useable power rather than eyeball-flattening thrust.
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Performance was adequate but it was never going to blow off Ducatis on the backroads, let alone the multicylinder rockets from Asia. The new fuel-injected 992cc engine was, however, a leap forward. The traditional Guzzi traits were retained – air-cooled 90-degree twin set transversely across the frame, shaft drive, and pushrods activating rocker-driven valves. The big-block crankcases and crankshaft were carried over. The difference was a totally new head design that had a high-cam (or ‘cam in head’) overhead valve layout. Each cylinder featured modern four-valve per cylinder combustion chambers and flat-top pistons, but all four valves were driven by a single belt-driven cam on the inside of the vee. A pair of short pushrods connected the high cam to a set of rocker arms, which operated two valves each. The result is unique and a strange blend of old and new, but it worked well. The Daytona produced 95hp, which remains respectable power for a litre sized air-cooled twin. A 1064cc version in later models cracked 100 hp.
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The Daytona LE became the RS, which then begat the Centauro. The Centauro continued using the 992cc “OHC 8V” (Guzzi always mislabelled the high-cam as an overhead-cam) motor in a more relaxed sport-cruiser design. The oddball Centauro was produced from 1996 to 2000 and never achieved much success, owing to a strange design, mediocre handling, and a high price tag. Aside from being strangely styled it wasn’t particularly noteworthy – but it would contribute its motor to the new MGS-01.

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Which brings us, in my usual roundabout way, back to MGS-01. In 2002 Moto Guzzi opened a new design centre dubbed the Style Laboratory. Here Guzzi would encourage the best and brightest stylists and engineers to build interesting concepts around Guzzi hardware. They handed things off to a team of five designers led by renowned Guzzi tuners (Giuseppe) Ghezzi & Brian (Bruni Saturno) and the MGS concept was the result. Introduced at the 2002 Intermot motorcycle show, the prototype causes a sensation. It was powered by a hotted-up Centauro 8V engine with shaft drive, but was otherwise all-new.
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The elements were unmistakably Guzzi, but the parts were put together in a way that was unlike anything they had made before. Sleek, angular bodywork enveloped the cockpit while leaving the motor unobstructed. A solo seat was perched over a single undertail exhaust. Front suspension was Ohlins upside down forks with radial mount Brembo brakes, while out back there was a sizeable aluminium box section swingarm wrapped around the driveshaft. The wheelbase was around 55 inches with 50/50 weight distribution. It was a pure sports machine that was clearly intended for the track, but a headlight hinted at possible street legality.
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The press went nuts and it was clear that building a production version was a viable exercise. Two versions were announced – a small initial run of Corsa models would be produced with race-kitted 1200cc engines and track-only equipment. A detuned street-legal version using the 992cc motor, called the Serie, would be available shortly after with a projected price of around $17000 USD. The motorcycling world waited with anticipation for Guzzi’s hottest sport bike since the Daytona.
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It took two years to get the ball rolling. In traditional Italian fashion Moto Guzzi had flirted with bankruptcy off and on for decades and had had a string of owners over the years. The infamous Alejandro De Tomaso had owned the brand from 1973 until 2000, when Aprilia purchased it. The MGS-01 was introduced under Aprilia ownership, but the company had difficulties with maintaining production and Aprilia had its own cash-flow problems to deal with. Things looked dire in 2004 when Guzzi was forced to stop production for a period, but at the end of 2004 Piaggio purchased the brand and resuscitated the works.
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The MGS-01 Corsa production began during this difficult transitional period. The Corsa was never intended to be a profit maker for the brand, and was the last thing a barely solvent company should be building in times of crisis, but despite the difficulties they managed to get the $25000 Corsa out the door.
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The Corsa featured a 1225cc, 100x78mm version of the 8V motor with hot cams, high compression Cosworth pistons, lighter internals, a six-speed gearbox (the Centauro and Daytona had five-speed gearboxes), a reinforced clutch, and upgraded lubrication. The net was 122hp at 8000rpm and a thumping 83 lb/ft a 6500, respectable for a big air-cooled twin. The chassis featured a box-section aluminium swingarm and steel spine frame, which doubled as an intake runner. As on the concept bike, there was Ohlins front and rear, Brembo brakes, and forged aluminium OZ wheels. Termignoni provided the 2 into 1 undertail exhaust. The production bike looked even more delectable than the much-lauded Intermot concept, with a gaping black maw (feeding the oil cooler) replacing the headlamp and carbon-fibre elements sprinkled throughout. 
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Reviews were favourable. The performance was impressive and the handling sharp. Testers noted that motor provided a broad, useable spread of power that was remarkably tractable for a race engine. But the weight was considerable for a track bike, over 420 lbs dry. It was good, but not the best. It was considerably cheaper than the highly-focussed Ducati-powered missiles from NCR, but the MGS-01 was more of a trackday toy for wealthy enthusiasts than a turn-key race-winner. It was eligible to compete in Battle of the Twins and Italian Supertwins and won some races in 2006 and 2007 but otherwise flew under the radar for the most part. After 150 Corsas were completed new owner Piaggio shut down production in 2005 to focus on more profitable ventures. The promised street-legal version never came to fruition, but each year a few rumours sneak out of Mandello and interest in the project is renewed. Supposedly the assembly line equipment is still in place and production could be resumed if only the bosses would give the go ahead…   
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Now it’s time to descend into the realm of conjecture and heresay, because what Italian bike would be complete without some whispered rumours and allegation of mismanagement behind it? The MGS-01 was the last machine to use the 8V Wittner-developed motor, and people have often wondered what happened to the 8V motor. After the MGS the engine was quietly forgotten by the factory, and quickly faded into obscurity. The current Quattro Valvole engine, introduced in the Griso 1200 in 2008, is a new high-cam mill that shares nothing with the previous design and has a totally different character. Supposedly, the rumour goes, the original 8V had a very specific alloy used in the cylinder head to properly dissipate heat from the air-cooled mill. This recipe was “lost” at some point and never re-formulated, so the final run of 8V motors used in the Corsa were built from new stock parts in the warehouse. Once the existing parts supply was exhausted, that’s it, that’s all – I don’t know what you are talking about, here’s a new engine, fuggedaboudit. In all likelihood production was simply shelved because it wasn’t profitable and Piaggio preferred to focus on money-making ventures rather than expensive sidelines. Since 2005 Guzzi has been recast as a producer of sensible street bikes and tourers, not uncompromised track toys. Additionally the 8V was getting a bit long in the tooth and was overdue for an update, lest it be strangled to death by increasingly tight emissions laws. But the whole “we lost the blueprints” story makes for a much more interesting, and stereotypically Italian, tale to share over beers at the pub.
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Information about the Corsa is consistently inconsistent. Supposedly Piaggio pulled the plug in 2005, but you can find what are claimed to be 2006 and 2007 model year examples (leftover inventory perhaps?). The original 2004 USD retail was proposed at $23000 – some sources quote claimed $37000. An archive of the Moto Guzzi USA website quotes $24 990 in 2005. Some say 150 were built, others say only 100, most agree 50 were earmarked for the US market.
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The MGS-01 has become a modern day classic. While some other limited production homologation specials have plummeted in value and trade for far less than MSRP, the MGS-01 has maintained consistent pricing. Today Corsas trade hands for $40 000 plus, and there are still a few zero-mile examples languishing in showrooms around the world. There are even a few brave souls who have taken it upon themselves to build “street legal” (in the flimsiest definition of the term) versions by slapping lights and mirrors onto Corsas. While many hoped the MGS-01 would become the beginning of a new direction for Moto Guzzi and the genesis of a line of pure sports machines from the venerable marque, it was not to be, and the MGS has become an interesting footnote in Moto Guzzi history. Today Moto Guzzi has refocused on relaxed tourers and standards, with nary a sport machine in their lineup outside of the café-styled V7. The prospect of a series of MGS models was a mouth-watering “what might have been” project, but ultimately it was not to be.

Nembo Super 32 Rovescio - Topsy-Turvy Triple

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Conservatism runs strong in motorcycle design and anything that breaks the mould is sure to garner its fair share of attention. You have many opportunities for improvement at your disposal – you could redesign the suspension (FFE350, Vyrus), the chassis (Gurney Alligator) or you could fit an unusual engine (Van Veen OCR). The Super 32 Rovescio, built by tiny Roman manufacturer Nembo Motociclette, is just such an iconoclastic machine. It is a motorcycle that literally turns engine design on its head – because designer Daniele Sabatini decided he could build a better motor by flipping it upside down.
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Inverted engines, where the crankshaft is placed above the cylinders, are nothing new. Piston aircraft have been using upside down engine designs for the better part of a century. By placing the cylinders and heads below the crankcase you can raise the mounting point of the propeller considerably while lowering the height of the cowling. You get better ground clearance via the higher prop and better visibility with the lower cowl, if the engine is forward of the cockpit. You also shift the centre of gravity considerably, which can aid handling in combat and aerobatic aircraft. 
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Certain wartime designs used armaments as their excuse for an inverted design – the inverted Daimler-Benz DB600-series V-12 allowed the placement of a 20mm cannon within the centre of the propeller shaft. A reduction gear was used so the prop was below the crank, allowing the placement of the cannon in the vee of the engine to fire through the hollow propshaft. This left room above the crankcase for two additional machine guns.
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An inverted engine has only been installed into a motorcycle once before. A 600cc inverted inline-four was built as a prototype by French company MGC in 1939, with the engine mounted longitudinally in the frame. It covered a mere (and ominous) 666 kms of testing with a sidecar before being mothballed - history intervened and the outbreak of the Second World War put the project on hold, never to be resumed.  

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Building an upside down engine isn’t as simple as flipping over an existing motor (though that has been done on occasion). A series of modifications are required to keep the motor lubricated. All inverted engines need to be dry sump designs, where the oil is held in a separate tank and fed to key lubrication points in the engine. Multiple oil pickups need to be placed in key locations within the engine to scavenge the oil without allowing it to pool in crevices. The cylinders need to be cast separately from the block and have significant liner protrusions within the crankcase, so that oil will pool around them, not pour into them.  Some older radial engines need to be checked and have their lower cylinders drained of oil before starting due to oil seeping past the pistons – if not, you risk blowing up the motor by hydrolocking the cylinders.
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In addition to unique lubrication considerations, the intake system of an inverted engine needs to be designed to accommodate the upside down combustion chambers – fuel injection can work against gravity, but carburettors can’t.
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So an inverted engine makes sense in prop-driven aircraft design - but why use it in a motorcycle? According to Sabatini, the reason is twofold: structural and aesthetic. The crankcases of an engine are the most rigid part of the structure – if you are using the engine as a stressed member, you generally want to bolt the chassis to the crankcase. If you use the heads, which are more conveniently placed up high, you need to reinforce them considerably. Sabatini wanted to get the best of both – with the crankcase up top, he could exploit the inherent rigidity of the crankcases and build a minimal frame around them. He could also radically alter the centre of gravity of the machine - contrary to popular belief, having an extremely low centre of gravity is not the ideal and today's thought runs towards mass centralization, rather than lowering the CG. A bonus effect is that the cylinders are better exposed to air flow - the engine runs cooler and the rider won't get cooked.

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The second consideration was purely cosmetic. Sabatini lamented the passing of the classic beauty of an exposed, air-cooled engine in favour of shrouded liquid-cooled designs. Thus the Nembo engine is designed to be A. air-cooled and B. beautiful. This aesthetic desire extends into the design of the motorcycle itself – only a naked roadster would suit Sabatini’s desire for classic mechanical beauty, with his unusual engine as the centrepiece.
Under the dummy tank of the Nembo 002 prototype. The forward tank is for engine oil, the rear is for gas. The cone filter for the air intake is at the front.
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Bleeding edge high performance engine design... is clearly not the point of the exercise. Aside from being air/oil-cooled, the Nembo engine is an inline triple with a single “underhead” cam and two valves per cylinder. It is fuel injected, but via a large intake plenum with a single throttle body like an automotive engine instead of the individual throttle bodies you’ll usually find on most performance-oriented motorcycle engines. Maximum volumetric efficiency and high-rpm power isn't the aim - a broad, usable spread of power for the street is. The engine makes loads of power across the board simply by virtue of being so damned huge - there ain't no substitute for cubic inches, and the Nembo makes plenty of power while remaining relatively unstressed. The claimed torque range from a stout 119 lb/ft for the 1814cc engine, and a staggering 177 lb/ft for the 2097cc version. For comparison, the 2294cc Triumph Rocket III triple makes about 145hp and just over 160 lb/ft. It also weighs 700 pounds... dry
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Aside from being upside down, the cylinder heads are also backwards from traditional bike design – the intake is at the front, the exhaust at the rear. The exposed plenum is set into the flow of oncoming air which keeps the intake components from getting heat soaked. Cylinders are individually jacketed with fine cooling fins and are reminiscent of one half an air-cooled Porsche flat-six when viewed from the front. The engine cases are sandcast with milled billet covers and a massive timing chain housing on the left side – the result looks remarkably like an upside down AJS 7R engine, which is to say quite striking. There is no denying the visual appeal of the design, and it is refreshing to see someone build an engine that is deliberately, not incidentally, beautiful.
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In the initial press release three projected displacements were announced. All three would share the same 77mm stroke, with different bores. The smallest would be 1814cc via a 100mm bore and would knock out 160hp, the next would be 1925cc via 103mm and would make 200hp, and the big boy of the range would displace 2097cc with a 107.5mm bore and make a stout 250hp. Impressive stuff, especially considering they claim the engine will be Euro 3 emissions compliant and the complete bike weighs 350lbs dry. Even the “small” 1800 version would have a near 1:1 horsepower : kilogram power-to-weight ratio. The low weight was due to a relatively light engine (190 odd pounds on its own – featherweight for something displacing 1800 plus ccs) bolted into a light chassis with simple bodywork and a slathering of high tech materials to keep the poundage to a minimum.
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The project began in 2009 and surfaced online in 2010 as photos of a completed engine on a test bench with an accompanying press release and spec sheet from Sabatini that detailed his philosophy and the technical data of his new motor, which he dubbed the 32 Rovescio (3 cylinder, 2 litre, reversed). The public was impressed, but sceptical. Few outside the aircraft industry were even familiar with inverted engines, and doubted it could even run. Other skeptics claimed it might run, but it would burn oil at a ridiculous rate and offered no advantages over a conventional engine. Most doubted the projected power and weight specifications, which seemed optimistic if not improbable for an air-cooled single-cam engine. The most common response was “Why?”.
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Criticism faded when photos of a complete prototype were shown a few months later. The bike looked menacing with bare carbon-fibre bodywork and the positively massive engine dominating the design. Up front was a conventional suspension with 50mm upside down forks and, oddly, a single Brembo brake. Rear suspension featured a springless air shock (similar to the Vyrus and Bimota Tesi 2D) attached to a carbon-fibre box-section swingarm. The frame was composed of two steel trellis subframes bolted to either end of the crankcases - the main mass of the frame is effectively the engine, with minimal subframes for the seat and steering head. The prototype was photographed, appropriately, in front of an air-cooled aircraft radial engine.
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However it appeared that the Nembo wasn’t yet ready for prime time. The prototype was shown without a complete exhaust, and had no drive chain. No street equipment was present, and it had a half-finished look to it. Again the critics doubted it would work. Yes, we have the trappings of a motorcycle bolted around this crazy engine, but no one had witnessed it running or moving under its own power.
Image Courtesy Nembo Motociclette
The critics were finally silenced in July 2011 when the Nembo made an appearance at the Franciacorta circuit for track testing. A bright, Italian red 1814cc prototype (the second built) burst into life in the paddocks with a throaty racket that can only be described as the bastard offspring of a Triumph triple and a Bristol radial. At low revs it had the signature mechanical whir of a British triple, while under load it sounded like a low-flying aircraft blasting across the track with a staccato bellow. The test rider praised the unusual design, reporting it had tidy handling, a broad spread of power, and an utterly magnificent sound. Apparently Sabatini’s venture wasn’t all vapourware – the proof was roaring around the track, attracting curious onlookers in the pitlane. The Nembo was present to tune the fuel injection and dial in the engine, with additional testing at the Adria circuit in the fall of 2011.
Image Courtesy Nembo Motociclette
The engine dominates the design, appearing massive in relation the other components. The swingarm is quite long relative to the rest of the machine, and pivots high in the engine cases by necessity – the countershaft sprocket sits at knee level due to the placement of the gearbox on top of the engine. The result looks like a strange amalgam that appears incongruous but purposeful – it looks like someone stuffed a GSXR-1100 engine into a dirtbike chassis. The hidden frame and minimal bodywork contributes to this all-motor appearance, as does the tiny tailsection and seat perched high above the rear wheel. Some make comparisons to café-racers, but I’d be more inclined to describe it as a brutish hand-built streetfighter.
Image Courtesy Nembo Motociclette
Despite making its maiden voyage on the track, the Nembo is not intended to be a race machine. It was designed to be a high performance street bruiser that was to be built to order in street-legal trim – or at least that was the plan in 2011. Since then news from the company has been nonexistent and their website inactive. The last public outing was the showing of the red track prototype at the 2012 Concourso d'Eleganza di Villa d'Este in Cernobbio, Italy. Retail pricing was never announced publicly but was anticipated to be exorbitant based on the hand-built nature of the design.
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Not satisfied with this lack of information I contacted Nembo directly. Owner Daniele Sabatini was kind enough to answer my questions and provide an updated press release that details the current state of the project. He was also kind enough to provide exclusive photos of the Nembo being track tested at the Adria circuit. I've posted a copy of the press release on the OddBike Facebook page and at the bottom of this page.
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Nembo is alive and well. Two 1814cc prototypes have been built, nicknamed Castor (the black carbon-fibre bike) and Pollux (the red example) after the Dioscuri twins of Greek mythology. Prototype 002, Pollux, is currently for sale at an undisclosed price - interested parties are asked to contact Sabatini directly. Once Pollux is sold, limited production of the Super 32 will begin on a made-to-order basis. The production version will feature the 1925cc engine and "MotoGP" levels of construction. Claimed power remains 200hp, with 145 lb/ft of torque. Sabatini notes that the two existing prototypes are well developed but that significant revisions have been made to the engine design over the years and that the forthcoming production engine will be much improved. There are also plans to develop a racing version to campaign at the Isle of Man TT.
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The press release describes the Nembo as "the most expensive road sport-motorcycle in the world" and Sabatini confirms that the production version is set to cost something in the region of 300,000 Euros a pop. Exorbitant, certainly. But keep in mind that you are not paying for a machine that uses an existing engine - the Nembo motor is 100% unique and the high price is needed to offset the enormous cost of designing and building an engine in-house without the backing of a major manufacturer (or the amortization of development costs by selling thousands of units). You are buying a hand-built concept machine, not a mass-produced amalgam of off-the-shelf pieces. As the press release notes:

While the others are rather 'assemblers', Nembo Motociclette can rightfully claim the title of true 'builder manufacturer'
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The Nembo is a weird offshoot on the motorcycle evolutionary tree. It's unlikely to be a breakthrough that will influence mainstream design, nor will designers clamor to build inverted engines now that the trail has been blazed. The benefits of such a design are offset by the added complexity of designing a motor from scratch. But if the Nembo had used the same engine design in a conventional arrangement we likely wouldn't be discussing it today, and the Super 32 would have remained an obscure project built in a shed somewhere in Rome. Instead it captured the imagination of a curious public and raised the ire of many critics. The Nembo press release notes that their online publicity was entirely viral and through the coverage of various blogs and forums.
Daniele Sabatini and his creation.
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The Nembo represents the sort of technological experiment that is a refreshing diversion, an exercise in pure engineering creativity driven by passion and the desire to do things differently. True innovation in motorcycle design is a rare quality, but Sabatini has created a machine that truly stands apart from convention. The result is one of the most unique and exclusive motorcycles in the world with an iconoclastic design that flips traditional design on its head.  
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Interesting Links
The Nembo Motociclette website
Ottonero Cafe Racer blog's coverage of the Nembo
The article that introduced the Nembo engine to the world
Early photos of the Nembo engine
Pictures of prototype 001, Castor


Image Courtesy Nembo Motociclette

2013 Nembo Press Release:

Nembo Motociclette

The 32. Young and already legendary:

Cars and motorcycles can be only means of transport, or wonderful toys that give to men, of character and good taste, sensations without equal.

We can say that cars and motorcycles are only means of transport, maybe very advanced and highly performing, when they are produced in assembly lines, all the same and aseptic, while they are “different”, solid dreams for few, when they have been built slowly, handcrafted with love and with the best technologies and materials, in few, very rare pieces, made to order.

When a motorcycle is part of the second category, it has a value added since no car will ever give the sensations that an extraordinary motorcycle can give.

It’s a different kind of luxury, that maybe you can succeed in buying, but if you do not have a finely educated taste, you could not even understand it. And his temper could slip away through your fingers.

Nembo Motociclette created the 32 for those few lucky people who will succeed to get it and understand it. The 32 is not only the most expensive road sport-motorcycle in the world, is an erotic mechanic dream, and its lines will remain beautiful and desirable forever, in spite of the passing of time.

No motorcycle is like the Nembo 32. For most people, the roar of its mighty two thousand cubic centimeters tricilindrico engine will echo like a thunder through the decades just in the videos on the web, but for the man who will ride this bike, that thunder will become part of their heartbeats.

It 's just two years ago, at the end of 2010, when Nembo introduced a mock-up prototype of the 32 in a motorcycle blog (Ottonero) and made a great stir, in motorcycles magazines, blogs and forums. That happens only with the new models introduced by the leading motorcycle manufacturers and after a huge media hype. Nembo Motociclette has done virtually nothing to promote its 32, however, one year after the showing of the first prototype video in its first track test, is already one of the most desired sport-bike of the planet and according to many, the only real new big thing in the motorcycle world since many years. 

Although Nembo has not yet submitted the final model, the "series" model, even if the term "series" is not part of our vocabulary.

A true revolution.

Many make handcrafted motorcycles today, selling them at very high prices and defining themselves "builders". However, none of them directly builds and develops its own engine, like Nembo does with its "Super 32 Rovescio," everyone else rather uses simple series engines purchased from others for a few thousand Euros.

That’s the watershed that divides the 32 from all the others.

Nembo has in fact its own engine, in-house designed, built and developed at the cost of considerable investment and a huge engineering and business effort. While the others are rather "assemblers", Nembo Motociclette can rightfully claim the title of true "builder manufacturer".

But if having created a new extraordinary motorcycle with its own motor is the dream, "invert" this engine to demonstrate a revolutionary dynamic and aesthetic concept, that’s already in the history of motorcycling, is the sublimation of this dream. You can imagine the value of one of the two extremely rare 1814 cubic centimeters prototypes in twenty or thirty years. Or imagine the value of the following 2000cc models too.

Facts:

Nembo Motociclette is a new small Italian motorcycle company based in Rome, Italy. It’s leaded by Daniele Sabatini, only owner and chief designer.

The first project of the Nembo Motociclette started in mid of 2009 to create totally new "naked" sport-bike from empty sheet. The result was the type "32" (i.e., 3-cylinder / 2 liters): the first and only motorcycle in the world to mount an engine inverted (or upside down) with the block that replaces the frame and where heads and cylinders are not involved in the structural function (patented innovation).

The production consists of top-end sports motorcycles, for road and track, equipped with in-house designed and manufactured engines. Even the frames, the swingarms, the tanks, the bodywork and the most of the components are designed and constructed in-house handcrafted and made with CAD/CAM precision machinery. Only wheels, front suspension, brakes and electronics are from third-party suppliers of global significance.

Manufacturing technologies are highly sophisticated and components are similar in sophistication to the standards of MotoGP bikes.

The bikes are built only to order and accurately assembled by hand.

The 32 has been designed to demonstrate a revolutionary concept in the true sense of the word: for making a motorcycle with a larger displacement engine that is fast, small, lightweight and easy to handle, it is necessary to invert the engine, i.e. install it on the bike “upside-down if compared to the traditional scheme. Only by that, we can reach the extreme mass-centralization to give to the bike an extraordinary dynamic behavior.

Only with this particular architecture enables the use of large displacement engines on a motorcycle which has the size and the weight of a 600cc or 1000 cc current sport-bike.

The 32 is designed to mount 2 liters motors, for dry-weighing, just 160 kg, to have a wheel base of only 1450 mm, while being equipped with a very long swing-arm, 680 mm axle to axle, almost half of the bike. To achieve these extraordinary goals, Nembo Motociclette had to develop and build its own engine: a new three-cylinders, four-stroke, in-line, called the "Super 32 Rovescio." The major element of novelty of this engine is mainly in the fact that works upside down, ie with heads and cylinders placed under the crankshaft.

The inverted inline engines are not new in the history of the engines. Indeed they are a very important element in it. De Havilland, Daimler-Benz and Junkers, for example, built hundreds thousands of them, in the thirties and forties, such as aircraft engines. In particular, the inverted in-line engines powered most of the German fighter aircraft used in World War II. Even the aircraft radial engines have half of the cylinders inverted and were also mass produced during World War II, serving until the sixties in the military and civilians air forces from around the world.

Nor we can say that these engines are new in the history of the motorcycle, as in 1939, a french motorcycle, the 600cc MGC was equipped with an inverted in-line engine. It had, however, a totally different architecture compared to the 32: in fact, the engine did not work as a frame and had its 4-cylinders placed on the longitudinal axis of the bike. It was built and tested, but the project ended because of the war.

The engine Nembo "Super 32 Rovescio" is the first engine in the history designed and built to work as a frame with the crankcase transversal to the motorcycle longitudinal axis. Moreover it’s the first inverted engine ever in the world can meet and exceed 8500 rpm, thanks to its innovative lubrication system. The previous inverted engines could reach just 4500 rpm. It’s also the first inverted motorcycle engine in which the block is the only cross-link between the steering head and swingarm and where the heads and cylinders are not involved in structural work.

The "Super 32 Rovescio" engine is also a very small to be a 2 liters three-cylinders. It’s even more compact and short of most of the current 1000cc three / four cylinders traditional engines. Also for this reason, the bike can be equipped with a very long carbon fiber 680 mm, axle to axle, swingarm, that allows excellent stability and great traction.

The displacement chosen for the "Super 32 Rovescio" engine is two liters, because unlike a 1000cc current engine, a 2-liter engine is capable of delivering more power and torque in a more gentle way at the low revs too, making driving the 32 fun, relaxing and "friendly" even for non-experts. However, it’s very powerful and installed on a so lightweight and agile bike, allows terrific performance and extraordinary feelings, never felt before with any traditional 600 or 1000 sport motorcycle.

The 32 is not designed to be a faired track motorcycle, it is quite a sport-naked made for fun, both on the road and on the track. Its natural habitat are the bends. But, besides being very funny, is more comfortable than a traditional superbike as the heat generated by heads and cylinders is located at the bottom of the engine, so not between the rider's legs.

Nevertheless, in the near future, competition models will be built, with adequate engines capacities, our hope is to compete at the Tourist Trophy race on the Isle of Man within a three years.

On October 2010 the upside down engine was assembled for the first time. At the end of 2010 was made the first check dry assembly with the real components of the bike. In July 2011 the first prototype was on the Franciacorta track of in a first test session for the dynamic tests. In October 2011, he performed his second test session on the Adria track at for a medium revs engine tune-up 

Tests have shown the validity of the original concept based on the inverted engine: superior handling in the bends, great balance, excellent dynamic behavior.

The first two prototypes, the 001 and the 002, are the only 32 with the engine from 1814cc. From 003, the first production model for sale, all the engines will be 2000 cc.

On May 2012, the 32 has been selected by the BMW Group / BMW Classic to attend the famous Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este 2012 at Cernobbio on Lake of Como Concorso d'Eleganza di Villa d'Este 

Production model specifications:
  • Frame: aluminum billet crankcase, connected to the steering hub by a Cr-Mo steel or aluminum hand welded and CNC machined or carbon fiber layered by hand and vacuum molded body autoclave treated sub-frame. 
  • Seat frame: Cr-Mo steel Seat sub-frame welded by hand or carbon fiber body layered by hand and vacuum molded body autoclave treated. Ancillary frame components made of billet aluminum and CNC machining.
  • Swing-arm: double-layered carbon fiber arms by hand and vacuum molded body treated in an autoclave. with elements from billet CNC machined aluminum, variable length mm 670/690, pivoted directly onto the engine block
  • Front wheel, five-spoke 17 x 3.5 carbon fiber hand layered and vacuum molded body treated in an autoclave.
  • Rear wheel rim, five spokes 17 x 6.0 carbon fiber hand layered and vacuum molded body treated in an autoclave.
  • Front tire: 120/70 ZR 17
  • Rear tire: 190/55 ZR 17 or 200/55 ZR 17
  • Front suspension: 50 mm telescopic fork USD
  • Rear suspension: prototype air monoshock by Double System / Silvano Bellapadrona expressly for Nembo, CNC machined from billet aluminum
  • Front brakes: two 320mm floating Brembo T-drive discs. Brembo radial calipers
  • Rear brake: 220mm single disc, two-piston radial caliper Brembo
  • Seat height: 80/86 mm, adjustable
  • Wheelbase: 1450mm (with 680mm swing-arm)
  • Dry weight: 160 Kg
  • Fuel tank: 12 liters. Aluminum hand welded tank
  • Oil tank: 4 liters. Aluminum hand welded tank
  • Body: carbon fiber hand layered and vacuum molded tilting body treated in an autoclave.
"Super 32 Rovescio" production engine specifications:

Dimensions:
Maximum width: 480 mm
Maximum height: 480 mm
Maximum length: 420 mm
  • Type: Inverted - 4 stroke - 3 cylinder
  • Bore: 103 [mm]
  • Stroke: 77 [mm]
  • Displacement: 1925 [cc] - 117.47 cubic inches
  • Compression ratio: 11.5: 1
  • Distribution: SUHC - single under head camshaft) driven by chain and gears
  • Number of valves: 2 per cylinder
  • Cooling system: air / oil
  • Lubrication system: Dry sump with double rotor scavenge pump
  • Clutch: oil bath
  • Transmission: 6-speed
  • Maximum power: 200 [bhp] @ 7500 [rpm]
  • Maximum Torque: 20 [kgm] @ 5500 [rpm]
  • Maximum engine speed: 8500 [rpm]
  • Dry weight 85 [kg] with structural aluminum billet engine block

König 500 GP - Outboard-Powered Underdog

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Kim Newcombe Konig Motorcycle
Kim Newcombe and his Konig Grand Prix bike
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Once in a generation there emerges a racing prodigy who defies belief and achieves success far beyond the odds. These men and women display innate and remarkable talent that is often so extraordinary that they become legends in their own time. They are the mythical “naturals”, those who perform complex tasks extraordinarily well despite their lack of experience. New Zealand motorcycle racer Kim Newcombe was one such prodigy, and one of the most tantalizing “what ifs” of motorcycle racing. He entered competition as a novice and immediately began to beat seasoned veterans. Not only that, but he single-handedly crafted and maintained his own machine – which he then campaigned successfully at the top level of the sport against the greatest riders of the 1970s. The tale of Kim and his Konig 500 GP motorbike is a true motorsports Cinderella story, and one of the most fascinating and tragic tales from the golden era of motorcycle road racing.


Kim Newcombe was born in Nelson, New Zealand in 1944 and grew up in Auckland, where he met the love of his life - Janeen. Married in their teens, Kim and Janeen moved to Australia in 1963 for two reasons – to be closer to Janeen’s mother, and to pursue Kim’s love of motorcycle racing.


Kim was a skilled rider who had an unstoppable passion for bikes, and displayed remarkable talent on dirt tracks, much to the astonishment of his more experienced competition. He competed successfully in various motocross venues across New Zealand and Australia in the 1960s. He was famously offered a chance to “try out” speedway racing on a borrowed Jawa offered by seasoned rider Jack White, and promptly won the first four races he entered. If it had two wheels, Kim could win with it – regardless of his apparent lack of experience.

After several years of successful competition on two wheels, Kim would be introduced to aquatic racing, a move that would have a profound influence on his life. It was while working as a marine engine mechanic for Bob Jackson in Melbourne that Kim was introduced to the König racing outboard motor. The König was a 494cc, two-stroke, flat-four boxer-layout engine that made impressive power and performed well in hydroplane racing. Kim was immediately smitten by the simple and powerful König engine, and wanted to meet the man behind the design.In 1968 Kim got his wish and was introduced to Dieter König - who offered Kim a position at the König factory in Germany.

Kim and Janeen moved across the world to West Berlin, where Kim would work on hydroplane development. The König marque had been producing marine engines in Berlin since 1928 and were well known in competition circles for their two-stroke racing motors. It was while working in the experimental department that he was offered a unique opportunity. A German racer by the name of Wolf Braun had built a motorcycle chassis around a König 500cc four, but was forced to abandon the project due to an injury. Dieter asked Kim to take over development, and he promptly devoted himself wholeheartedly to the endeavor.



Regardless of Kim’s enthusiasm and Braun’s experiment, the was still a boat engine and was designed as such. Fitting it into a bike was not straightforward and it required a great deal of development work to make the whole package function, let alone win a race.


Konig Hydroplane Engine
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König engine was a square-ratio 54mm x 54mm flat-four. Rather than stick the heads out in the wind ala BMW boxer, the engine was mounted with the cylinders front-to-back, pointing at the wheels. This kept the width reasonable, but added length - the resulting bike is low and long, looking more like an oversized 50cc Grand Prix bike than anything in the 500cc category. The frame was based around a massive steel backbone, a conventional swingarm with dual shocks, with Ceriani forks at the front and Ceriani drum brakes at both ends.



Marine engines drives their propshaft directly with no transmission in between, so to fit a gearbox the König had to have a chain-driven primary added to the left side of the engine, connected to a Norton gearbox housing and clutch with an upgraded six-speed gear set. The long motor had to be tipped up at the rear to give room for the gearbox, which gave it a characteristic off-kilter look.

Outboard motors are cooled by water circulated from the surface they are racing on, which means the coolant temperature is always low and heat can be dissipated quickly. This isn’t the case with liquid cooled land-based engines, which re-circulate the coolant through a radiator. Temperatures are controlled, but the coolant remains relatively (scalding) hot – if the coolant passages and water jackets aren’t designed to deal with this elevated temperature you run into problems... Which is exactly what happened with the König motor. Through trial and error an effective radiator system was developed along with a unique cooling system for the crankcases. Normally liquid cooled engines only need to directly cool the barrels and sometimes the heads. Two-strokes, however, route their fuel charge through the crankcases before being sucked into cylinders. If the crankcases get too hot, the intake charge gets overheated and power suffers. This was a problem with the König, so Kim developed a clever liquid-cooled magnesium sump bolted to the bottom of the engine to keep temperatures in check.

Konig 500 Engine Motorbike
Notice the toothed belt for the rotary valve. The pulley drives the waterpump.
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This sump interfered with the placement of the exhaust ports on the bottom of the engine, so the cylinders were reversed and exhausts were pointed up – right next to the intake. This caused packaging problems as the carburettors occupied the space between the exhaust headers. The fully vertical downdraught inlet ports also caused issues as most motorcycle carburettyors were sidedraught designs. This necessitated the use of American Tillotson diaphragm items, designed for use in multiple positions and used on Harley Davidsons and snowmobiles, but not in road racing - which meant limited tuning potential compared to more popular brands of carburettors.

Konig Motorcycle Prototype
Factory prototype. Notice the underslung exhausts which were not used on the racing Konigs.
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Despite the drawbacks once the prototypes were up and running the König 500 proved to be a force to be reckoned with. For the time it was an advanced design that incorporated many innovations that would later become standard in racing two-strokes – rotary (disc) valve induction, loop scavenging, and expansion chamber exhausts. Rotary valves are operated via a rotating disc that separates the carburetor from the crankcase opening. The crankshaft spins the disc, opening and closing the port and accurately timing the intake charge. The König used a disc driven by a toothed belt that made a 90-degree turn from the right side of the engine up over the crankcase.

Exhausts with expansion chambers are critical to proper two-stroke tuning, and the König was one of the first motorcycles to use the massive chambers that would later become common on two-stroke bikes in later years. In fact they had been using expansion chambers on outboard motors for years. The purpose is to redirect exhaust pulses backwards - because the intake and exhaust ports on a two stroke are open together, cross flow and fuel mixture leaking into the exhaust is inevitable. The ideal two stroke mix is a non-turbulent and complete filling of the chamber, without leaking the unburned mixture through the exhaust ports. Expansion chambers reflect the pulses of the exhaust flow back into the cylinder to push the fuel mix back into the cylinder and increase charge pressure – more efficiency, more power. The König used paired headers, with one pipe for the front pair of cylinders and one for the rear, which reduced the amount of pipework significantly.

Up until the 1960s two-stroke bikes were considered the cheap and nasty option, a simple and crude alternative to four-strokes, particularly in racing. Two-stroke performance tuning was still in its infancy and smokers struggled to compete against the well-developed four-stroke opposition in international competition. In the late 60s the tide was beginning to turn as Japanese manufacturers developed two-strokes into viable contenders on the track, but for the time being it was still the very much the era of the four-stroke racer. At this time four strokes and two strokes competed with equal displacement - there were no displacement penalties for 'smokers, because at the time two-strokes were not sufficiently developed or reliable enough to have any unfair advantage. The König was thus one of the first two-stroke racers to achieve notable success, preluding the two-stroke dominance of road racing that would occur in the 1970s.
When the first prototype was completed in 1969 it produced 68hp and had impressive performance, at the expense of any semblance of reliability. Despite possessing the stout engineering of a racing outboard, the engine was fragile when adapted for use in a bike. The König got a reputation for being fast when it wasn’t blowing up or eating transmissions. It took significant development, testing, and tweaking, all done by Kim on the fly, to make the König a competitive racer.


In 1970 power was improved to 75hp - serious go in a bike that weighed just over 250lbs. Later versions made over 80hp. In 1971 the bike was campaigned with rider John Dodds at the helm and Kim acting as engineer/mechanic. Reliability was still an issue. Dodds became tired of constant breakdowns and left the König team to race a Yamaha, which left the avenue open for Kim to take the reins.

Knowing the König better than anyone else, and willing to work through its flaws and give it the babying and development it needed to be reliable, it was perhaps only natural that Kim would become the principal rider. But Kim wasn’t a road racer – he didn’t have an FIM racing license, nor had he ever competed on asphalt. But once again, his performance would defy belief and his exploits would become the stuff of legend.


Kim won his first time out, taking first at the Avus track in Berlin and putting the König on the map. He began racking up victories at an astonishing pace. Word spread quickly about the German-made bike that was dominating the field. It's only natural that local fans would go nuts: here was one of the first German bikes to achieve success since the pre-war BMWs and DKWs had turned their wheels in anger. Kim became equally revered, quickly earning his FIM license and proving to be just as skilled at road racing as he had been on dirt – and this was on a bike that he had effectively built himself, which he maintained and fixed himself.

Kim Newcombe Janeen Mark
Kim, Janeen and Mark
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Road racing in the early 70s, even at the Grand Prix level, was a much more humble pursuit than it is today. We are accustomed to seeing celebrity racers who earn seven-figure incomes backed up by teams of engineers and mechanics. In the 1970s you had the Continental Circus, a caravan of racers and their families who shuttled themselves from venue to venue with their own modest equipment. They setup their lives in the paddocks and slept in campers or tents. Wives, girlfriends and children followed the riders in their nomadic lifestyle, including Kim’s wife Janeen and their young son Mark. Money was tight and sponsorship limited and only a few top-level racers like Phil Read and Giacomo Agostini, both with MV Agusta, got the luxury treatment. Racing in general was much more down to earth and the riders formed a tight knit community. Most raced for the pure love of the sport – it certainly was not for the money.


As an upstart with no experience Kim was forced to operate on a shoestring budget. He became friends with many riders in the paddocks and some, recognizing his talent, helped him establish himself in the Circus and get the odd sponsor to pay the way. When he entered the 1972 500 Grand Prix he was a one-man operation, working as rider and mechanic and rebuilding the bike himself between races. Later during the season he met an old friend from Australia, Rod Tingate, whom he hired as his personal mechanic for the next two seasons.

Kim Newcombe Giacomo Agostini
Kim and Mark on the podium with Giacomo Agostini
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Despite the difficulty he and his tiny operation faced against better-funded factory teams, Kim achieved some notable successes. He took third place at the grueling West German Grand Prix held at the Nurburgring, on his first outing at the legendarily difficult course. The König was seriously fast, powerful enough to overtake the champion MV Agustas on the straights. And Kim was clearly a highly skilled rider, able to place on the podium at unfamiliar tracks with only minimal preparation. Unfortunately Kim’s season was cut short by an accident at the Dutch Grand Prix that resulted in a broken vertebrae. He placed 10th at the close of the season, an impressive finish for a rookie rider who didn't complete the full schedule of races. He made a full recovery and returned for the 1973 season.

So remarkable was the success of the König in Grand Prix that series production was started at the König factory. Bikes were sold as complete turn-key racers, or as do-it-yourself kits. Perhaps most surprising was the interest that BMW showed in the possibility of a street-legal König-powered motorcycle. Two prototypes were built in 1972 in secret by BMW.  Both prototypes used an extended R90/6 chassis built around detuned König flat fours that were mated to a BMW transmission and driveshaft. One was a 350cc “sports” model, the other a 500cc “tourer”. Both prototypes survive today, the 350 is in storage at the König factory while the 500 has been fully restored and registered for road use. Unlike the Grand Prix bike the engine was mounted across the frame in traditional BMW boxer fashion. The project, unfortunately, never progressed past the prototype stage – BMW was fiercely dedicated to four-strokes and were not interested in producing a two-stroke of any description. 

BMW-Konig 500 Prototype
BMW-Konig 500cc Tourer Prototype
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When Kim returned to the Grand Prix in 1973 his performance was stellar and threatened to unseat the all-conquering MVs. He placed on the podium consistently, and such was the performance of the König that he was passing the vaunted MV 500 triples on the straights. After a win at the Yugoslavian Grand Prix the upstart from New Zealand, complete with stylized Kiwi bird on his helmet, now led the championship in points. An unknown rider who built his own bike around a boat motor was overturning the traditional racing hierarchy. To give an idea of how significant this upset was, the last bike that had threatened MV Agusta’s unstoppable championship streak was a factory-backed, no-expenses-spared Honda. Ridden by Mike "The Bike" Hailwood, one of the finest riders of all time. And it lost.
Monza 1973 Crash
The 1973 Monza crash
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The 1973 season was marred by a horrific accident at the Monza 250cc GP race. At the time safety considerations were marginal at best and rider concerns were often ignored. A similar attitude permeated  all forms of motor racing at the time, where drivers were patronizingly scolded for being frightened by what was by nature a dangerous sport. A few brave souls, including Jackie Stewart, were campaigning for increased safety measures against significant opposition and entrenched prejudices. Tracks were often ill equipped to deal with accidents, or laid out in such a manner that prevented safe runoffs in the event of a crash. Or, as was the case in Monza, the organizers were simply too apathetic to deal with glaring safety issues. In the 350cc race that preceded the 250cc event, one of the bikes leaked oil onto the track. During the 250 warm-up lap the riders noted that there were significant oil slicks in some of the corners, and John Dodds asked organizers to clean the circuit before allowing the event to proceed. Dodds was rebuffed and threatened with expulsion, and the event went ahead. At the first corner the starting pack hit one of the oil patches and a chain reaction began, resulting in the deaths of legendary riders Renzo Pasolini and Jarno Saarinen and the injury of several others. It was clear that attitudes had to change, but unfortunately the Monza crash would not be the last tragedy of the 1973 GP.

Near the end of the season Kim and his König were invited to an unlimited category series in the UK, with the first race at the Silverstone Circuit. Rumour had it that the John Player Norton team was looking to pick a fight with the König on home turf, and Kim was offered tantalizing starting money. The race wasn’t a championship event but it offered the opportunity for Kim to make some extra money before the end of the season, and he was thrilled to have been invited – such was his growing fame that he was starting to get offers after years of riding in relative obscurity.


A 680cc version of the König was prepared and Kim, Janeen and Mark hopped across the channel to enter the event. The day before the race Kim did his usual walk around to familiarize himself with the track. He noticed that one particular corner, Stowe, had a dip in the surface right before a sharp turn facing a wall of wooden beams. Concerned for rider safety he approached Vernon Cooper, clerk of the course, about placing hay bales in front of the wall. Cooper was incensed. He angrily rebuffed Kim and threatened him with expulsion from the series if he had the audacity to complain again.

Silverstone Circuit Track 1973
Silverstone layout in 1973
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The next day, the 11th of August, Kim led the race for six laps before hitting the dip at Stowe, running wide off the track, and striking the wall. Unconscious, he was treated on site before being transferred to a local hospital. Later in the day Cooper suggested maybe they should put some bales in front of the wall at Stowe after all.

Kim never regained consciousness and was declared brain dead on August 14th. Janeen gave permission for him to be taken off life support and his organs donated. He was 29 years old, and he posthumously took second place in the 1973 500cc Grand Prix, beating Agostini and finishing behind Phil Read.

Konig Motorcycles Motorbikes
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Following Kim’s death, Dieter König wanted nothing more to do with the motorcycle project. He was deeply disturbed by the event and never pursued any further development of the König bike. Production ceased in the mid-70s after approximately 100 bikes and road racing engines were completed and the company returned to manufacturing marine engines exclusively.

Dieter provided a spare engine to Rod Tingate before Rod returned to Australia. Tingate would subsequently build an exact replica of Kim’s championship bike.

Mark Janeen Newcombe
Janeen and Mark Newcombe, 2004
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Janeen Newcombe never got over the death of her husband and mourned his passing for decades. She told Kim’s story in an excellent 2005 documentary called Love, Speed, and Loss before succumbing to cancer in 2006.


After 1973 the König motorcycle faded into history. The production bikes continued racing in various categories, and König-powered sidecar hacks won the 1974, ‘75 and ‘76 Sidecar GPs. 1973 would remain the last year of Grand Prix competition for König. The MV Agusta winning streak would continue until 1975, when Giacomo Agostini jumped ship and won the championship aboard a Yamaha – the first two-stroke to win a 500cc World Championship and the herald of a new era in motorcycle racing.

Mark Newcombe Phil Read Konig 2004
Mark, Janeen and Phil Read at the 2004 Bikers' Classic
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Mark Newcombe would ride a König at the 2004 Spa-Francorchamps Bikers’ Classic race, wearing his father’s iconic black and yellow leathers. Renzo Pasolini Jr. was also present, riding his father’s Benelli. It was a touching tribute to two of history’s greatest riders who were both killed in the tragic 1973 season.

Kim Newcombe was a true underdog in Grand Prix competition, a scrappy and talented rider who defied the odds and surprised the world by threatening the dominance of MV Agusta’s factory effort with one of the most unlikely pieces of machinery anyone could imagine at the time. Nobody expected a friendly, soft-spoken Kiwi riding a land-going outboard motor to challenge the racing hierarchy, let alone lead the 500cc World Championship. But Kim did just that, working almost entirely on his own and performing astonishingly well at the highest level of the sport despite a complete lack of experience. He was a legend in his own time that was taken away in his prime in the most unfortunate of circumstances – a fatal accident that he foresaw and tried to prevent. It would take years of fighting and boycotts for safety standards to improve in motorsports, with the 1970s being the final decade of the "killer years" before serious action was taken. Today we enjoy relatively safe and well-funded racing that Kim and his contemporaries could only dream of as they shuttled themselves and their families from circuit to circuit, chasing wins across Europe.  

Kim Newcombe Konig Motorbike
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Interesting Links
Love, Speed and Loss documentary about Kim Newcombe and the Konig motorcycle
Motorcycling Australia article on the Konig
NZ Herald on Kim's story
1972 BMW-Konig prototypes
Konig motorcycle specialist
Konig photo gallery
Grand Prix: The Killer Years, an excellent documentary that profiles the people who sought to improve safety conditions for drivers

Voxan - Café (Racer) Français

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Voxan Cafe Racer Motorcycle
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When you think of big sporting V-twins and café-styled roadsters, what do you picture? Italy and Great Britain maybe - well-groomed Latin men astride thundering sports machines or perhaps greasy-haired rockers congregating outside a bar.

It’s unlikely you’d imagine Issoire, a quaint town filled with medieval architecture situated in the heart of France.
Voxan Cafe Racer Motorbike
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But that’s just where Voxan, the only French motorcycle marque of the modern era, operated for the better part of 20 years. Voxan made a name for themselves building quirky sport bikes and standards around their own engine and chassis architecture, a project that was fiercely patriotic and proudly homegrown. It was France’s last true motorcycle manufacturer, a marque that struggled against home market legislation, manufacturing difficulties, and near-constant battles against insolvency.
Voxan Cafe Racer 1000 Dash
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The Voxan story begins relatively recently, in 1995. A French medical-supply tycoon by the name of Jacques Gardette got the idea of developing and producing the only French large displacement street motorcycle to be made since the Germans invaded. The bike had to be modern, based around an in-house engine and chassis, and offer the best everyday performance that could be (legally) offered in France. Perhaps most important it would be as French as possible, in terms of design, components, construction and production - the Voxan was a fiercely patriotic project from the beginning. Gardette would not settle for a foreign motor or chassis with some tricolores painted on. The project was given financial support by Groupe Dassault (of aviation fame) in 1996, with the first prototype unveiled to the public in 1997.
Voxan Black Magic Motorcycle
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France has long had an odd position in Europe when it comes to motorcycles. There is a rich history of riding in the country and a strong market for bikes, but it remains one of the most draconian nations to purchase or register a machine in. Every single machine sold and registered in France must not produce more than 100hp (75kw). This law has been in effect since 1985 and means that no matter how powerful a bike is in other markets, it will never have more than 100hp in the République. You want a R1? 100hp. S1000RR? 100hp. 1199 Panigale? 100hp. There is no distinction for class or displacement, simply a blanket regulation that requires either electronic or mechanical restriction to keep the measured power of the bike under the legal limit.

Major brands with major exports to France will detune the engine via internal modifications like new cams and lower compression pistons, maybe fattening up the midrange as much as possible at the same time. Small brands might mechanically block the throttle linkage or put restrictor plates into the intake. Sometimes turning on “full power” mode is as simple as swapping an ECU or removing a laughably simple restrictor mechanism, and it is an open secret that many riders ditch the systems as quickly as they can. However, getting caught with a derestricted bike means stiff penalties and the assumption of complete liability in the case of an accident, regardless of circumstances. If you get rear ended by a distracted driver at a stop and your bike is found to be derestricted, you are considered at fault and assume full responsibility for the person who plowed into you – and forget about getting insured afterwards, because your insurance company will disown you and/or jack up your premiums to obscene levels. All because you were so irresponsible as to desire the same puissance as the rest of the world, you fiend.*
Voxan V72 Engine Motor
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That is why every Voxan produced has been rated at, you guessed it, 100hp. Usually quoted at a leisurely 8000 rpm, despite the fact the engine revs past 9000. Power comes courtesy of a single motor shared across the board and developed for Voxan by French high-performance engine specialist SODEMO (Société de Développement Moteur). A certain old-world disposition was desired, and as max power wasn’t the aim or even legally possible a 1000cc V-twin was selected for simplicity and character. Liquid cooling and a modern design was specified, and the engine was designed from a clean sheet. Rather than go with the traditional 90-degree layout popularized by Ducati, the designers chose to go with an unconventional 72-degree vee. Previously only Moto-Morini had used a 72 degree design in their 350 and 500cc twins. Erik Buell would adopt the same layout in his 1125 engine as he found it was a fair compromise between compact size and intake spacing – narrower than that and you crowd the intakes together too closely which then forces a certain port angle, an issue with the Aprilia 60-degree twin.
Voxan Frame Engine Chassis
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The result is a more compact package with only a bit more vibration than a 90-degree design. 90 degree twins have perfect primary balance and are remarkably smooth as a result, without the need for counterbalancing. But the tradeoff is a wide angle that lengthens the wheelbase considerably. Go the other way and make the vee too narrow, a la Harley 45 degrees, and you get annoying paint-shaker vibrations. The Voxan engine found a happy medium between the two. Aside from the odd vee angle the engine was fairly conventional – 98x66mm bore and stroke for 996cc, double overhead cams driven by chain operating four valves per cylinder, all fed by Magnetti-Marelli fuel injection. Rotax built the prototype engine but SODEMO in Magny-Cours built all production motors.
Voxan Rear Shock Suspension
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The chassis was an advanced piece of kit for the mid-90s, penned by notable Grand Prix designer Alain Chevallier. Chevallier made a name for himself in the 1970s and 80s building Yamaha Grand Prix two-strokes and was one of France's best chassis designers, which made him a natural  choice for the Voxan project. He developed an interesting frame that combined elements of a twin-spar frame with a backbone layout, with two heavy round-section beams flanking the cylinder heads and joined to reinforced headstock and swing arm supports at either end. The result was reminiscent of the Triumph T595/509 frame, and left the motor in the open with no unsightly beams or spars blocking the view. An underslung rear shock linkage was designed to keep the wheelbase short and make room for the rear cylinder in the frame. It also freed up space beneath the seat, which was occupied by the fuel tank - fuel capacity was 19 liters and was eventually expanded to 21 liters, which would have been big on a tourer let alone a sport bike.
Voxan Cafe Racer
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The chassis incorporated a few interesting features. The Voxan mill is a dry sump design with the oil carried in one of the backbones of the frame. The steering head support doubles as an air intake and air box - it is undersized compared to what has become the norm in modern intake design, but as the engine cannot produce more than 100hp it is a moot point. Geometry of the entire chassis can be altered via eccentric mounts, allowing fine tuning of every aspect of the bike - which is odd considering the Voxan was not intended to be a track bike, but it indicative of Chevallier's racing sensibilities.

Suspension, wheels and brakes were bought in from established outside suppliers and vary according to model and year of production. Early models had WP suspension components and Brembo brakes. Dry weight was around 400-410lbs, reasonable for the class.

Voxan Roadster Motorcycle
Roadster
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The first production bike, the Roadster, was introduced in 1999 as a limited production machine produced in a run of 50 examples at a sticker price of 11400 Euros. Styled by Yugoslavian designer Sacha Lakic, (in)famous for penning the Bimota Mantra, the Roadster was a classically inspired sport-standard that was clearly a product of the late 90s "chocolate bar left in the sun" school of vehicle design, with nary a right angle in sight. The engine was fully exposed and the bike unfaired. While the geometry was clearly sporty and the seating position was upright, the details looked odd, like a facsimile of a Japanese V-twin cruiser/standard from the 80s or 90s wrapped around a big liquid-cooled engine. It looked like a modernized 1981-82 Yamaha XV920R or Honda VT500 before they became Harley parodies. In other words: clean styling but nothing groundbreaking.
Voxan Roadster Motorbike
Roadster
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Response was favourable and the Voxan got plenty of good press in the home market, where patriotic French riders were proud to finally have a home-grown option that wasn't a Peugeot scooter. Performance was more than adequate but nothing groundbreaking, it was a good standard bike and got polite praise in the motoring press, which is good for an upstart company. Testers noted that the engine was strong and had a broad spread of torque through the midrange, and that revving past the 8000 rpm power peak was useless, which revealed a certain degree of detuning to meet French law. The handling was good, but the suspension was noted to be extremely stiff from the factory and more suited to track riding than street use. Few seemed to notice, even reviewers outside France, that the engine was "detuned" to meet French laws - such was the useable power that no one complained about a lack of shove due to the 100hp limit. Most of the liter-twin opposition of the late 90s had 10 or 20 more horses at their disposal, a noticeable difference but not enough to make the Voxan seem anemic in comparison. The Voxan made up for this power deficit by being considerably lighter than the Japanese twins, most of which hovered around 500-plus pounds wet.
Voxan Roadster Motorbike
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After the 50 Roadster Limiteds were sold, series production began of a "standard" version began, which was largely the same as the initial run of bikes. In 2000 it was joined by what would become the signature model of the brand, the Cafe Racer. The CR refined the styling and added some sporty details, but retained the chassis and engine from the Roadster. A one-third fairing was added surrounding a pair of round lights, as was a more sculpted tail with a removable solo-seat hump. Clip ons and a more forward seating position distinguished the sportier CR from the more laid back Roadster. This would become the archetypal Voxan - sleek, sporty and distinctive. It had a unique style that remained restrained and recognizable as a "classic" sport machine, without resorting to avant-garde spaceship styling.
Voxan Cafe Racer Motorcycle
Cafe Racer
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In spite of the favourable press and solid product, the company struggled against well-established marques. Voxan was a boutique manufacturer in any case - the company motto was "Pour les connaisseurs", which revealed a certain degree of snobbery and elitism that few manufacturers dare to say in polite company. Indeed, reading French reviews and press copy reveals a different attitude when it comes to presenting the machine. Reviews are patriotic and full of hyperbolic praise for the home team player. Press releases and the company website are filled with flowery, passionate language and the act of conjuring emotion than they are about actually revealing any technical information about the machines. The press copy speaks of building a specialized machine for a passionate and well-heeled rider who desires something better than the typical foreign motorcycle, but they neglect to explain basic details about the bike. Anyone who has perused a French automobile brochure will be familiar with this magnificently pretentious presentation of a vehicle. In all fairness the Italians are often guilty of the same sort of overblown emotional-artistic drivel, but it has come to be expected of them.
Voxan Boxer VB 1 Motorcycle
Voxan-Boxer VB-1
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One of the most desirable Voxans was the Boxer VB-1, unveiled in 1999 as a concept alongside the production roadster. The VB-1 was a handsome fully faired superbike that offered the tantalizing possibility of a finely crafted V-twin sport bike that wasn't produced in Italy (or copied in Japan). The VB was designed in partnership with Boxer Design, a vehicle design company based in Saint Jean. The VB-1 proved to be a brilliant halo product, as many in the industry suddenly sat up and took notice of the tiny manufacturer who were showing this sleek and modern superbike. People outside France unfamiliar with the national laws were puzzled by the claimed 100hp figure, but an export/track version was quoted as having 123hp which put it head to head with the Ducati 996, Suzuki TL1000R, and the Honda RC-51. This was, apparently, the "true" power of the Voxan twin when it was uncorked. Production of the VB-1 began in 2001 and much to the disappointment of fans only 31 examples were built, each with a 15000 Euro price tag.
Voxan Scrambler Motorcycle
Scrambler
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By 2001 things were looking dire. Despite the introduction of a less expensive new model, the street-and-trail styled Scrambler penned by Boxer Design, sales were meager. The company was placed in receivership in June 2001. Bids were tendered and the company was taken over in June 2002 by boat-building company Société Guy Couach, which formed the Voxan-SCCM (Société de conception et de construction de motocycles) group.
Voxan Street Scrambler
Street Scrambler
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With new capital and a push to expand the lineup development began on several new models, all built around the existing Roadster/Cafe Racer architecture with variations in style and suspension components. In 2003 a new Street Scrambler was introduced with cast wheels and Cafe Racer suspension. In 2004 the Lakic-styled the Black Magic and Black Classic were unveiled, which were essentially updated Roadsters that were a visual nod to the Norton Manx and English cafe-racers. The Magic had a naked cafe-racer look with clip ons and high pipes, while the Classic had higher bars, spoked wheels, and lower exhausts. Prices were creeping up steadily - the Black Magic retailed for 15000 Euros, the same as the limited edition VB-1 from three years prior. During this period the company also tried its hand at competing in various categories including stints at Le Mans, the Isle of Man TT, and in the Pro-Twins category.
Voxan Black Magic Motorcycle
Black Magic
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Voxan soldiered on for several years, operating in relative obscurity. Exports to the UK began in 2005. 2006 saw the introduction of the Charade Racing limited edition, a higher-spec Black Magic with a half-fairing that sold for an eye watering 18990 Euros. The company went public in 2007. All was not well behind the scenes, however. Sales were slow and the company had difficulty obtaining parts - or, perhaps more likely, difficulty paying suppliers. The higher-ups blamed the Italian distributors for production issues. It was no fault of theirs, they being noble Frenchmen, apparently it was those lazy Italians who were sabotaging the works...
Voxan Charade Racing Motorcycle
Charade Racing
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Philippe Starck Voxan Super Naked Motorcycle
Starck Super Naked
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In 2007 Voxan showed two promising concept bikes. They jumped on the sport-tourer bandwagon with the GTV 1200, which was to use a 1196cc version of the V72. More interesting for enthusiasts was the Starck Super Naked, an avant-garde streetfighter design drawn by famed furniture designer Philippe Starck. In terms of two-wheeled contrivances, Starck had previously designed the much-derided Aprilia Moto 6.5 in 1995, a total flop that Ducati/MV Agusta engineer Massimo Bordi referred to as "created by a designer who doesn’t understand the difference between a motorcycle and a filing cabinet". Starck appeared to understand the difference by the time he penned the Super Naked, which featured aggressive styling and a razor-edged, flame-surfaced design that gave the venerable Voxan platform newfound life and caught the attention of the motorcycle press around the world.
Voxan GTV 1200 Motorcycle
GTV 1200
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Despite these promising concepts, the financial crisis of 2008 would prove to be the final blow to the ailing company. There wasn't much demand for expensive, limited production bikes from tiny manufacturers after the world economy went into meltdown, and Voxan would limp along until 2009, when the company declared bankruptcy and went into liquidation. A last-gasp prototype called the VX10 Nefertiti roadster, which looked like a toned-down Super Naked with some mighty distinctive stacked trapezoidal headlamps, was shown to a French magazine but wasn't enough to delay the inevitable collapse.
Voxan VX10 Nefertiti Motorbike
VX10 Nefertiti
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The factory was shuttered in 2010 and the equipment sold, as were the remaining parts and prototypes housed in the company warehouse. The rights to the name were purchased by Venturi Automobiles, a Monaco-based upstart green-vehicle manufacturer. Unfortunately for Voxan fans none of the tooling was carried over and Venturi has no interest in producing a gasoline-powered vehicle. Supposedly they intended to slap the Voxan name on an electric motorcycle slated for introduction by 2013, though no details have been released since the takeover in 2010. It appears that, for all intents and purposes, Voxan is dead. 
Voxan Starck Super Naked Motorbike
Starck Super Naked
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Voxan attempted to resurrect the tradition of a sporting V-twin in Europe, and succeeded in creating a quality machine that garnered a fair share of respect. They emerged from the ether in a market that had not sustained a street motorcycle manufacturer since the 1930s, and achieved remarkable success for an upstart company operating in a home market whose laws conspired against the production of a high performance sport bike. Unfortunately Voxan's constant battles with suppliers and their struggle to remain solvent in spite of slow sales chipped away at the company until they finally collapsed in the wake of a worldwide economic crisis, suffering the final indignity of being absorbed into a "green" company that has no respect for Jacques Gardette's original vision. Many boutique marques were culled, or at least given a rude awakening, in 2008 when the demand for exotic and expensive playthings dropped off the map in the midst of economic panic. It would seem that Voxan's motto of "Pour les connaisseurs" worked against them in the end.
Voxan Street Scrambler Ad Advertisement
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*Footnote - France's 100hp limit (revised to 106hp in recent years) is scheduled to be abolished by 2016, after decades of lobbying by motorcycle groups. Additionally, a recent call for a blanket 100hp limit across the European Union was rejected, sparing riders in the rest of Europe the indignity of being nannied into submission by meddling governments. The freedom to ride what you please and enjoy the journey, unfettered by pointless legislation and petty bureaucracy, is a delicate privilege that must be maintained and respected. 

Always cherish your freedom to ride, and fight for your right to do so.     

Interesting Links
The (now defunct) Voxan website
Wayback Archive of the Voxan site in 2008
Voxan owner's club website
Moto-Net Voxan road tests
Motomag Voxan road tests
MCN announces the Venturi takeover
Review of the 2005 Voxan Cafe Racer
Review of the 2005 Voxan Black Magic
Eulogy for Voxan

Magni Sport 1200S - Italo-Asian Hybrid

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When it comes to exotic Italian motorcycles, few brands can claim the prestige and history of Magni. The bikes that have rolled out of Arturo Magni’s shop are the sort of two-wheeled art that become instant classics right out of the showroom. Magni's decades of experience with Gilera and MV Agusta during their respective glory years have informed the development of some of the most iconic and beautiful sports machines ever produced in Italy, powered by classic engines from MV and Moto Guzzi. Magnis are fast and elegant, and are powered by sonorous, red blooded Latin engines.

So when Magni introduced their swansong production model in 1999, it only made sense that it would be powered by a Japanese four yanked out of a Suzuki Bandit. Wait, what?


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This is the story of the Magni Sport 1200S, one of the most incongruous products to ever emerge from the Magni works, and arguably the sexiest bike to ever be powered by the Suzuki air-oil cooled four cylinder.

Arturo Magni with one of his creations
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The Magni story begins with the namesake of the company, Arturo Magni. Magni was perhaps one of the most important single figures in Grand Prix motorcycle racing during the mid-20th century, a man who helped craft and maintain the dominance of the most winning-est GP team of all time - MV Agusta. He was a man who operated fervently behind the scenes to keep MVs on the podium and develop their four and three cylinder racers into an all-conquering force that dominated the 500 and 350 GP categories. All told, MV won over 200 GP races under Magni's direction.

Gilera 500 Four
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Arturo Magni began his career in 1947 with the legendary Gilera racing team, working under engineer Piero Remor as the team's chief mechanic. Remor had made an indelible impression on the motorcycling world by introducing the first modern four cylinder racing engine - the Gilera GRB. The GRB was developed in 1923 and was the first engine to use the setup we now take for granted - a transversely mounted inline four, set across the frame. The GRB begat the GNA, which was developed into the water-cooled Rondine pre-war supercharged engine, which was then reworked into the post-war air-cooled double cam 500-4, which would serve Gilera well until they retired from Grand Prix racing in 1957. The Gilera set the standard for racing fours and would serve as a key inspiration for Magni and his subsequent work. But it would be Magni's work at a rival company, who were making waves in the 125 category, that would define his subsequent career.

Count Domenico Agusta and his team
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Meccanica Verghera Agusta was the concern of wealthy aristocrat Count Domenico Agusta, heir to the Agusta aviation dynasty. He began working on a motorcycle project in the 1940s as a way of diversifying his aviation company, but was interrupted by the war and a German occupation of his works at Cascina Costa.  After the war ended, he restarted the project to employ the employees of Agusta aviation factory - as you'd imagine, there wasn't much demand for Italian aircraft parts once the Allies took over. Many Italian companies turned to the production of inexpensive motorcycles as cheap transportation for a war-ravaged economy, and MV was no exception. Racing was a natural progression for most Italian companies, and in the late 1940s MV began to successfully campaign in the 125cc category with simple but competitive two-stroke singles.

The Count with his four
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When these two-strokes were eclipsed by highly developed four-stroke engines from rivals like Mondial and Moto Morini, MV needed to find an expert with experience in designing four-stroke racing mills to stay competitive in the quickly evolving sport - the exact opposite of what would happen in the 1970s with the re-emergence of two-strokes as the dominant design. Here was where Remor and Magni proved invaluable. Remor had been chastised by Gilera management for a string of mechanical failures and was ripe for poaching by MV. Magni had left Gilera to join MV in late 1949 and Remor followed shortly thereafter. Some sources claim Remor left first, others that both went together - regardless of the chronology they were both working for MV by early 1950. Remor was tasked with developing a new overhead cam 125cc single to beat Mondial at their own game, and a 500cc four with which MV could compete against the all-conquering Gilera team at the highest level of racing.

John Surtees signs up to race for MV in 1955
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The 500 four would be developed over the subsequent years, with only moderate success due to a weak chassis design. That would change in 1955, when MV hired rider John Surtees. Surtees, who was skilled at communicating with engineers and well versed in frame and suspension setup, would prove invaluable in developing the 500's into a competitive racer. It would win its first World Championship in 1956. Gilera took the top spot in 1957, and then withdrew from racing as part of  gentleman's agreement among Italian manufacturers to stop competing in an expensive category that offered nothing in the way of profit. MV were supposed to discontinue their GP effort as well... But Count Agusta had other ideas, and continued to compete while his Italian rivals bowed out. Thus began MV's legendary championship streak - MV Reparto Corsa would win every 500 World Championship from 1958 to 1974, as well as ten 350 championships during the same period, with Arturo Magni at the head of the race department for every single season.

Surtees on his mount
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Magni helped develop the MV racing department into a well organized and highly professional team that would dominate competition. Magni reported directly to the Count and ensured that development was swift and efficient. The Count dictated what he wanted, and Magni made it happen - with no bureaucracy or bean counters to interfere. The goal was always to win races, at any cost. When Remor left MV, Magni managed to keep development rolling despite the lack of a singular engineer overseeing development, even designing some of the components himself - impressive when you realize he was a mechanic by trade. The whole operation was notoriously secretive, with deliberate disinformation spread to throw off competitors seeking to copy the design elements of the MV racers. Count Agusta even went so far as to make certain that retired machines were crushed and buried, lest they be reverse engineered or bought by privateers.

The MV racing department. Based on the legends about the MV works, I presume the photographer was politely asked to hand over his camera before he was shot and buried in the back along with last year's bikes.
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After the Count passed away in 1971, development slowed and the MV juggernaut began to face stiff competition from a new wave of powerful two-stroke racers. They nearly lost the 1973 500 championship to Kim Newcombe and his outboard-powered Konig, and probably would have beaten if Kim had not been killed before the end of the season. Their championship streak was finally broken in 1975 by a two-stroke Yamaha, ridden by their former poster boy Giacomo Agostini. They won their final World Championship in 1976.  By 1977 the party was over and the company withdrew from racing. The race department was broken up, and the bikes and spares were sold off. Production of road motorcycles continued in limited quantities until 1980 when the company was shuttered. MV Agusta was dead.

Agostini, Spa 1970
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Magni left MV in 1977 to start his own company, Elaborazioni Preparazioni Magni. The company began as a specialist producing go-fast parts for MV road bikes. Arturo's years of experience with the MV race works gave him a particular insight that allowed him to build some of the sexiest, fastest machines of the era. When most people think of a Magni, they picture a big MV four from the 70s, with curved black quad pipes and race-replica bodywork.  And this was true for the first few years. While MV was still producing bikes, Magni was modifying them, either as complete turn-key machines or as customs based on customer-supplied bikes. The results were some of the most iconic Italian machines of the era, and today Magni MVs command serious money. And there has never been a road-going four cylinder that sounds better than an MV with Magni four-into-fours at wide open throttle.

Magni MH1 - the MH2 was the same except for a addition of a bikini fairing
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Once the MV factory shuttered in 1980 Magni continued assembling bikes from spares and modifying customer machines, but it was clear that using MV bits was not sustainable. So Arturo set about building a production chassis kit that used an existing motor. Magni was skilled at building chrome-moly steel tube frames and applied his skills at developing a classic hybrid - Asian motor, European frame. He took the air-cooled four out of a Honda CB900F and built a series of machines called the MH1 and MH2, an Italian bruiser of a street bike that happened to be powered by a Japanese motor. Such hybrids were not a new concept - Bimota had been building chassis kits and complete bikes around Honda and Kawasaki motors since the 70s. At the time Japanese frame and suspension design was still behind the Europeans and there was a thriving cottage industry putting powerful and reliable Japanese engines into proper frames.

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The Honda-powered MHs were followed in 1982 by the 1000cc MB1 and MB2, motivated by BMW R100 boxer twins. Frame kits were made for various engines, and you might still occasionally come across a hitherto forgotten "Magni-hyphen-somethingorother" at a vintage track day. In 1985 Magni began a long-running partnership with Moto Guzzi with the Magni Le Mans 1000. The company would continue to produce a line of exclusive and fast Guzzi big-block powered bikes into the 1990s, with plenty of race-prepped machines along the way that competed successfully in various categories. All the Magni bikes shared the qualities introduced by the MV and MH specials - custom chrome-moly frames, the best suspension, wheels and brakes available, beautiful and purposeful bodywork, and some fettling with the motors to keep things interesting. The chassis design was inspired by Arturo's years of racing experience, but never really evolved beyond that - he stated in the early 1990s that alloy beam frames were a passing fad he had no interest in. He was half right: beam frames weren't a fad, but a good steel tube design could still cut it against modern machines - just ask Ducati.

Either the single best or worst use of Comic Sans of all time
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So Magnis were uncompromising, expensive, a bit old fashioned, inspired by years of racing heritage, and completely lust worthy. They were quintessentially Italian and made use of the best components available. They were exotics of the highest order... So why in the hell did they build the Sport 1200S around a Suzuki Bandit engine, one of the most ubiquitous motors of the last 20 years?

The Donor - Suzuki GSX 1200 Inazuma
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The Sport 1200S was a throwback machine that recreated the style and presence of the MV 750 Sport at a significantly more affordable price. For 15 492€ you got the Magni hand crafted chrome-moly frame with right-side-up Ceriani forks and Brembo brakes and a pair of Showa shocks at the rear. The engine breathed through a set of signature black curved four-into-four megaphone exhausts. The alloy swingarm was taken from the Bandit - or, to be more accurate, the GSX 1200 Inazuma which was a retro-styled variation of the Bandit that had a dual-shock rear suspension. In fact most of the parts were straight off the Suzuki donor bike - the instruments, wheels, switchgear, master cylinders, carburettors, and airbox were all unmodified Suzuki bits. Dry weight was 430 lbs. The 1156cc powerplant was untouched and power was quoted as 100 hp and 67 lb/ft, the same as a stock Bandit/Inazuma. The whole kit was finished off with some retro flourishes like chromed mudguards and a sculpted fuel tank painted in the classic red-white-blue scheme made famous by the 750 Sport. The seat was also inspired by the Sport, resplendent in bright red with an upholstered bump stop. This was a strictly solo machine with no provisions for a passenger, just as any proper sport machine ought to be.

The Inspiration - 1971 MV Agusta 750 Sport
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While the Honda-powered MH made sense at the time it was released, using an antiquated Suzuki four out of a dull-looking standard that sold by the boat load was an odd choice for a company so well-versed in building tasty exotica. At face value, anyway. Dig a little deeper and you'll see that the 1156cc four is really quite a good option if you are looking to build a classic air-cooled special with some modern grunt, even if it is a bit common.

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The GSX/GSF 1200 mill was a direct descendant of the legendary GSX-R1100 engine produced from 1986-1992, which in turn was a bigger brother to the groundbreaking GSX-R750 motor. These early GSX-R motors bucked conventional wisdom by skipping liquid cooling in favour of a proprietary air-oil cooling setup that Suzuki dubbed the Suzuki Advanced Cooling System (SACS). Rather than adopt a heavy liquid-cooled setup that added weight and complexity, Suzuki engineers chose to develop an air-cooled engine that was capable of producing the power of a contemporary water-cooled mill. The big barrier for producing power in an air-cooled engine is heat - air-cooling alone isn't capable of sufficiently lowering the temperature of the heads and pistons enough to allow a high compression ratio. Try to tune an air cooled engine like a water cooled equivalent and you'll quickly end up with cracked heads and melted pistons. SACS solved this problem by adopting a trick from air-cooled aircraft engine design - using oil jets to cool the heads and pistons. While many air cooled engines will feature oil coolers to keep the overall engine temperature in check, only a SACS motor uses the oil to actively dissipate heat with a second set of channels and a special double-chamber pump that direct high-pressure streams of oil at the tops of the combustion chambers and the bottom of the pistons, in a circuit that is seperate from the regular lubrication system. Extra fine cooling fins were cast around the barrels and heads to further aid cooling. In other respects the engine was relatively conventional and modern, with flat top pistons, double overhead cams, and four valves per cylinder in a shallow combustion chamber with a 40 degree valve angle.

The SACS combustion chamber cooling passages
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The SACS system worked remarkably well and allowed the GSX-R to undercut the competition significantly when it came to weight, while still producing competitive power. It also made the engines stupendously reliable. The SACS fours developed a cult following, on the street and on the track, and earned a reputation for being utterely indestructible. They became the mount of choice for privateers looking for a relatively inexpensive but reasonably competitive option. While GSX-Rs never conquered the race track, they did win the hearts and minds of street riders and became the prototypical lithe sport bike that could race on Sunday and tear up the backroads on Monday. The fact you could beat the everloving crap out of it and it would keep on ticking was a bonus that endeared many riders to the air-oil cooled GSX-Rs.



The GSX-R began as a 748cc Superbike-legal machine, with a 1052cc "1100" following shortly thereafter. The 1100 wasn't eligible for road racing classes but became a legendary street bruiser, a huge and massively powerful machine that competed against the equally brutish Kawasaki ZX-10 and ZX-11. The 1052 engine began with a claimed 128hp and power rose steadily over the years. The engine was eventually bored out to 1127cc with final variants producing a claimed 145hp before a new liquid-cooled engine was introduced. In 1996 a detuned version of the GSX-R1100 engine was put into a sport-standard chassis to create the GSF 1200 Bandit and GSX 1200 Inazuma, which were the big boys in the GSF/GSX range that had begun with a humble 250-four in 1989. Engine modifications included a 1mm overbore to give 1156cc, milder cams, and a 9.5:1 compression ratio instead of the 10:1 of the GSX-R. Claimed power was 100hp, but with a broad spread of torque that gave the 1200 a reputation of being a stump-pulling wheelie monster. It was also quite easy and inexpensive to tune the 1200 mill back up to GSX-R power levels without compromising reliability. The Bandit 1200 remained in production until 2006, when it was killed off by increasingly strict emissions regulations and replaced with a liquid-cooled successor.

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The 1100/1200 family of engines have a strong cult following and are as good a street motor as anything else - broad, useable power and ample reserves of torque with a reputation for being unkillable. So despite being rather "ordinary" it wasn't a poor choice to stick it into a Magni by any means.

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The finished product was, however, a bit underwhelming. Aside from prejudices against the choice of motor, the 1200S used so much of the donor bike that it looked very much like a tarted-up Bandit with a fancy seat and different gas tank. Even the custom, tig welded frame appeared similar to the original Suzuki item. It cost double the price of the donor bike, inexpensive for a Magni but a lot of money for what amounted to a fancy frame some different cosmetics. Reviews noted that the bike successfully channeled the spirit of a classic sport bike - it was uncomfortable, impractical, difficult to ride slow, and not particularly good at the limit either. While the frame and brakes were good the suspension wasn't up to snuff and reviewers complained about poor setup from the factory. Funny enough nobody bitched about the engine, which remained the torquey peach that has endeared so many to the Bandit, and top speed was in the region of 140 mph if you could stand the wind blast. Despite the Magni pipework it didn't sound nearly as good as an MV four, but then again nothing else does.

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Despite being rather underwhelming, reviews still praised the charm and beauty of the 1200S. It wasn't practical or good value, but that wasn't the point. It was a hand-built exotic that just happened to use an engine you could fix at the local Suzuki dealer. It was built to order in limited quantities and for discerning clients who wanted the classic Magni experience on a more limited budget and without the headaches of an antique motor. Production details are scant but it appears that the run of bikes was completed around 2000-2001 and Magni returned to what they did best - building and tuning Italian iron. Today Magni continues to produce parts, but series production (such as it was) ended with the 1200S. However, Arturo and his son Giovanni will still produce a custom bike to order if you have the means. Their most recent creation was the R3 Rocket, a classic Magni special built around a tuned vintage Meriden Triumph triple, unveiled at Quail in 2012.

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Magni remains one of the classic Italian boutique manufacturers, a small and passionate family company informed by decades of experience in one of the greatest racing organizations of all time. And the Sport 1200S remains one of their most curious and obscure specials - a beautiful Italian machine built around a rather pedestrian Japanese engine.

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Interesting Links
Magni website
1993 Magni-MV 861 auctioned in 2008
Motorcycle Classics profile of Magni
MCN review of the Magni Sport 1200 S
Magni Sport 1200S photos

Julian Farnam's CHOPPRD - The leading-link Dirtbag RD400

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Farnam RD400 Yamaha CHOPPRD Motorcycle
Image Courtesy Alan Lapp

In a modest garage a few miles east of San Francisco, there is a man who builds motorcycles. This might not sound particularly exceptional, as there are men building bikes in many garages in many cities, and some of them are exceptional enough to get profiled on sites like this. Julian Farnam is a different sort of builder though, and he has built a different sort of bike. He is a consummate tinkerer, a man who puts together unique machines of his own design in his spare time. It's not his day job, but he is damn good at what he does – producing some of the most interesting and thoughtfully designed custom bikes you'll come across anywhere. The bike we are featuring today is one of Julian's odd creations, a raked and chopped Yamaha RD400 that applies one of Julian's favourite concepts – alternative front suspensions. More remarkable is that the CHOPPRD, as Julian has christened it, was built in his spare time over a 30 day period for a total budget that could not exceed $1000 – that includes the donor bike and all the parts and modifications that go with it.

Read the rest about Julian Farnam's CHOPPRD RD400 on Pipeburn



Farnam RD400 Yamaha CHOPPRD Motorcycle
Image Courtesy Alan Lapp

Julian Farnam RD400 Yamaha CHOPPRD Motorbike
Image Courtesy Alan Lapp

Horex VR6 - Teutonic Six-Pot Roadster

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Horex VR6 Roadster Motorcycle
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The list of six-cylinder motorcycles is, admittedly, a short one. For production machines you have the Benelli Sei, the Honda CBX, the Kawasaki KZ1300, and the current BMW K1600 and Honda Goldwing 1800. For race bikes you have the Honda RC166 and Laverda V6. Six pot bikes are a rare breed, but there has been a new addition to the list, and it comes from a long-defunct German brand that came out of nowhere in 2010 to announce that they would build a six-cylinder roadster with an engine design unlike anything else on two wheels.


Read the rest of the Horex VR6 story on Silodrome.com



Horex VR6 Engine Motor
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Horex VR6 Roadster Motorbike
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Silk 700 - The Ultimate English Two-Stroke

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Silk 700S Sabre Motorcycle
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Think of the icons of British motorcycling and odds are you will think of one thing exclusively – four-strokes. All the great flagship cycles of English industry – the Commandos, the Manxes, Bonnevilles, Tigers, Interceptors, Gold Stars, and anything else of note from the golden age of British bikes was going to be operating on the principles of suck-squish-bang-blow. British two-strokes were relegated to small, cheap, entry-level machines that were aspired to by no one. Dirty two-strokes were the domain of the Japanese as far as most of the British marques were concerned.



Silk 700S Motorbike
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There was, however, one important exception: in the earliest years of British motoring, the Scott Motor Cycle Company produced the fastest and most sophisticated two-stroke machines of the period. Seventy years later, in the waning years of the British cycle industry, George Silk would take that same engine and attempt to build one of the ultimate road-going British two-strokes that would offer a far more refined alternative to those cheap and fast Japanese 'smokers.
Scott Motorcycle Logo
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The story of the Silk motorcycle must inevitably begin with the Scott. Founded in 1908 by Alfred Angas Scott, the company produced a line of well-developed and advanced two-stroke parallel twins that would become famous for their speed and sophistication during the Edwardian period. Scott was a remarkably talented engineer who began designing two-stroke engines in the late 19th century while working in the shipbuilding industry. His initial designs were for marine engines operating on Joseph Day’s piston-port crankcase-compression two-stroke principles, but he also developed many prescient mechanisms that would later find their way into motorcycle design. You might be familiar with one of his devices: he designed a clever ratchet and pawl mechanism driven by a foot-operated lever for starting a motorcycle engine. That’s right, Scott helped design the kickstart, which would become the most elegant and masculine way to break your own foot outside of a bullfighting ring.
Scott Two-Stroke Parallel Twin Engine


 The first production Scott motorcycles featured a 450cc parallel twin, utilizing cross-flow scavenging and liquid cooling, placed in a patented triangulated steel duplex frame of Scott’s own design. The Scott would prove to be one of the most advanced designs of the Edwardian era: aside from kickstarting, a well-braced frame and liquid cooling, the Scott featured telescopic front forks, and his machines were the first to incorporate a multi-speed transmission – only two speeds, but still twice as many as the competition.
Scott Motorcycle Engine Crankcase
Image Courtesy Roger Moss

Alfred Scott designed from first principles and built his machines to be the best from the outset – his work was free of influence from “tradition”, however recent such conventions may have been in the in nineteen-oughts. But being the most advanced on the market is pointless if your product doesn’t perform, or dun-blows-up as soon as you wind out the throttle. Scott understood this, and designed his namesake machine to be durable, reliable, and well developed. He would prove his machine’s prowess in the traditional, time-honoured manner – by kicking the competition’s ass on the racetrack. In fact Scott motorcycles dominated British road racing and so thoroughly trounced their four-stroke opposition in the 1910s that organizers declared them “overly efficient” and slapped them with a 1.32-multiplier displacement penalty (thus a Scott of 450cc would be forced to compete against 600cc four-strokes). You know you are doing something right in racing when they rewrite the rulebooks to handicap you.
Scott Motorcycle Racing Wheelie
Image courtesy Roger Moss

Competition success begat a loyal following and a series of increasingly powerful and advanced models, culminating in the famous Squirrel series of 500 and 600cc machines introduced in the 1920s. Scott also developed a highly advanced manufacturing facility that would be considered state of the art, even after the Second World War – some 30 years after it was initially devised. Unfortunately Alfred Scott passed away in 1923 after contracting pneumonia while testing his Sociable three-wheeled vehicle. He had effectively left the motorcycle business in 1917 to focus on the Sociable project, an unsuccessful attempt to build an inexpensive and practical vehicle for the masses. Without his leadership, the company became technically stagnant and continued producing warmed-over Squirrels for decades with minimal development – what had once been 20 years ahead of the competition was now 20 years behind. Supposed improvements led to more weight and more complexity, which led to outcry from traditionalists. Rather than rework the designs to move forward, Scott continued producing old models alongside the “improved” versions to satisfy their nostalgic followers. In reality even the “improved” designs remained that of the interwar Squirrel series with modest improvements. Evolution was extremely slow and conservative, and as they years passed Scott went from being a highly advanced manufacturer to a curious producer of relics from a bygone era.
Scott Motorbike Racing
Image courtesy Roger Moss
Things fizzled out by 1950, at which point the Scott name and facilities were bought out by engineer/investor Matt Holder, who would go on to purchase the rights to Vincent, Velocette and Royal Enfield. Holder moved production from the traditional Scott home of Shipley to Birmingham and restarted production with some improved chassis powered by the same “long-stroke” twin that remained more or less unchanged since 1928. “Birmingham” Scotts were produced in limited quantities until the end of the 1960s, when the works was mothballed and put into storage at the old Triumph Number 2 factory in Meriden. A few bikes would be assembled to order until 1979 and Holder maintained his ownership of the copyrights and spares stock, but series production ended in 1968-69.

Even in the 1960s Scott ‘cycles remained well respected with a loyal following of die-hard owners who extolled the virtues of their advanced design, light weight, and smooth, torquey engines. George Silk was one such die-hard, a man who loved Scotts and who was well known for his exploits in the Scott enthusiast’s community. Silk believed the iconic sloping-twin could be improved with an up-to-date chassis and the application of some modern tuning techniques – after all, the Scott twin hadn’t been updated in 40 years and was initially designed to run on 60 octane fuel. So George set about building a properly modern home for the well-respected parallel twin with its smooth, torquey powerband.
Scott Motorcycle Pistons Roger Moss
Scott deflector pistons with transfer port cutouts. Note that these are new Moss Engineering pistons - Silk pistons had a similar arrangement.
Image courtesy Roger Moss

Yes, torquey – unlike more recent two-stroke designs, Scotts utilized a cross-flow scavenging setup that produced a wide powerband at the expense of top-end performance. In two-strokes, with both the exhaust and intake ports open simultaneously on the power stroke, the flow of mixture across the cylinder (called scavenging) must be controlled in some fashion. Too much flow without enough control will result in over scavenging, where the unburned mixture will just flow straight through into the exhaust. Cross-flow (also referred to as piston-port) scavenging uses a tidal-wave shaped deflector cast into the crown of the piston to direct the flow of incoming mixture upward into the roof of the combustion chamber, swirling it up and over the crown and past the spark plug.
Two-Stroke Cross-Flow Scavenging
Cross-flow scavenging.
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Cross-flow designs have been considered obsolete for a quite some time. Modern high performance two strokes utilize Schnuerle porting, better known as loop scavenging, developed in 1926 by German diesel engine engineer Adolf Schnürle and first adopted in motorcycles by DKW in 1934. Loop scavenging uses carefully arranged and angled ports to accomplish the swirling effect needed for proper performance, without the need for a deflector. Thus the piston can be flat topped, reducing reciprocating mass and allowing for a higher compression ratio – the tall deflector on a cross flow piston acts as a heat sink which increases the likelihood of detonation and piston overheating, thereby limiting potential tuning. There are, however, two distinct advantages to cross-flow engines – one is a much wider powerband and a flatter torque curve than a loop scavenged engine, the other is excellent fuel economy.
Silk-Scott Special Motorcycle
Silk-Scott Special
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That’s enough two-stroke theory, back to story at hand: George Silk Jr. was the son of an ardent Scott fan who had George apprentice under Tom Ward, a technician who had worked for Scott prior to the First World War. Tom wasn’t able to pay George an adequate salary once his apprenticeship was over, so George entered into the commercial engine rebuilding business at age 21. He tinkered with Scott tuning on the side, with some attempts at building competitive vintage racers that he campaigned in sprint and road racing in the late 1960s. While working on these racers, he formulated an idea to place the classic Scott engine into a modern frame to improve handling, and idea that would become the genesis of the Silk motorcycle.
Silk-Scott Special Motorbike
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George approached Bob Stevenson at famed frame manufacturer Spondon to modify a duplex cradle frame to fit a Scott engine attached to a Velocette four-speed gearbox. The resulting machine had tidy handling, but was let down by the ancient motor design. Even the best Scotts were lucky to crack a genuine 20 hp without serious reworking, so placing such a motor into a modern road-racing frame was certainly overkill, but the results were encouraging.
Silk-Scott Special Motorcycle
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Spurred on by the handling offered by his Spondon-framed prototype, George set about building a series of Silk-Scott Specials for discerning clients. He founded Silk Engineering with partner Maurice Patey in Derbyshire in 1971 and began to mate hotted-up Scott motors to Spondon frames with modern running gear. However, George hadn’t obtained the rights to the Scott name from copyright owner Matt Holder. Legend has it that some overly proud owners may have exhibited a bit too much arrogance regarding their new and improved Scotts, which led to Holder disavowing the endeavour and refusing to sell Scott spares to Silk. Another telling of the story says that Holder was annoyed that Silk was putting Scott logos onto the tanks of his wholly unauthorized machines, and swore him off. Whatever the circumstances, this meant that prospective Silk-Scott buyers were asked to supply their own crankcases to be able to construct the machines, no mean feat considering that Scotts were prized machines that were unlikely to be gutted to build a hybrid.
Silk 700S Sabre Motorcycle Motorbike
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Silk applied improvements to the engine as well as to the chassis - His experience under Tom Ward and his years of building racers had given him some ideas on how to improve the performance of Scott engines. Porting was modified, the crankshafts and bottom ends were improved, and cutaways were added to the solid-skirt pistons to improve flow from the crankcase into the transfer ports. The basic bore, stroke and timing of the donor engines were retained, but aside from that the motors were more or less new from the crankcases up. The delicate Scott radiator was replaced with a more robust and easily found unit taken from the Velocette LE. A four-speed Velocette gearbox was adapted to work with the Scott motor – it was flipped over and mated to the Scott engine via a chain primary and clutch designed by Silk. Being flipped upside down, the shifting was left hand, reverse pattern. The box had to be lubricated with the outmoded method of manually greasing the gears. At least one customer returned the machine to have the gearbox sealed and run in oil to make maintenance a bit less… intensive.
Silk 700S Brochure
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These Silk-Scott hybrids were produced according to customer specifications from 1971 to 1975 - total production during was a mere 21 machines. However original Scott engines and crankcases were extremely hard to obtain in good workable order, and Matt Holder’s blockade precluded the purchasing of new stock parts, so a solution was devised. In 1975 George announced a new, street-legal Silk machine would be built with a proprietary engine, designed and produced in-house to circumvent the Holder blockade. The Silk 700S would be heavily inspired by the design of the Scott parallel twin, but would feature many modern improvements and much higher performance to match the excellent chassis they had developed. Initial price tag was £1355, or around 150% the price of a contemporary Norton Commando, making it the most expensive production bike on the market at the time.
Silk 700S Mark 2 Engine
Silk 700S Mark 2 Sabre engine - note fins on the cylinders.
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David Midgelow, a Rolls Royce engineer and a neighbour of George’s, was contracted to design the engine. Dr. Gordon Blair was hired to design the porting, exhaust, and optimize flow characteristics. The basic Scott design tenets were retained in the new engine – it was a 180-degree parallel twin sloped forward 40 degrees, with cross-flow scavenging, and liquid cooling via a pumpless thermo-syphon system that used convection to circulate coolant. The cases, heads and cylinders were cast in aluminum alloy, with cast iron bore liners. A 76mm bore and 72mm stroke gave 653cc. The deflector-crowned pistons were externally copied from a 1928 Scott sample, with a different internal shape and skirt cutouts. Because piston manufacturer Hepolite required a minimum order for custom pistons and Silk was such a tiny manufacturer, only 1000 of the 700S pistons were cast and all were in the same 76mm diameter. No oversized pistons were available for rebuilds – if you need a rebore, you need to get the iron liners replaced to maintain the stock piston diameter.
Silk 700S Sabre Engine
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Fueling was via a single 32mm Amal Concentric running in the traditional Scott location, feeding an inlet tract cast into the crankcase between the two cylinders. A proprietary oil injection system was used that where oil was metered out as needed from an alloy tank under the seat. A device connected to the throttle dispensed oil according to how much throttle was applied, allowing for up to 1000 miles between oil tank fill-ups, with no need to premix gas and oil. Like the Silk-Scott Special the piston skirts had cutaways to allow better flow through the crankcase into the transfer ports, with the bonus of fresh charge cooling the underside of the piston crown and lubricating the small end of the con rod. At first glance most two-stroke savvy people assume the cutouts indicate a reed valve inlet but in fact they only affect the transfer ports, not the crankcase intake.
1978 Silk 700S Mark 2 Motorcycle
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Claimed power for the new mill was 45 bhp at a leisurely 6000 rpm, with 45 lb/ft available at only 3000 rpm. While not earth shattering by modern standard, you must keep in mind that an 850 Commando of the period made a claimed 53hp and weighed over 100lbs more than the Silk. Additionally, fuel economy was in the 50 plus mile per gallon range, exceptional for a two-stroke of any description. A loop-scavenged machine might have the edge in power - the 653cc Silk made about the same horsepower as a contemporary Yamaha RD350 – but a Silk would outgun the Asian ‘smoker in the grunt department. The Silk also had a characteristically throaty growl that is unusual for a two-stroke, helped in part by its “siamesed” two-into-one exhaust – it almost sounds like a four-stroke machine, but not quite.

Like the Silk-Scott Special a Velocette-type four-speed gearbox with gearsets cut by Roger Moss was used, but in the 700S it was integrated into the newly designed crankcases. Final drive was by chain and sprocket, but fully enclosed against the elements. Silk, ever the salesman, claimed that the spread of power was sufficient to not need more than four gears, unlike those peaky Japanese machines that required five or six gears. Indeed, reading the sales brochure for the Silk you would think it was the finest, most carefully designed and magnificently constructed machine of all time, such was the care and attention that was put into the hyperbolic descriptions. You have to respect the company’s enthusiasm, and the fact that they were able to design and build their own motor despite being a tiny, underfunded operation.
Silk 700S Sabre Motorbike
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Chassis-wise the Silk 700S had a duplex Spondon frame similar to the Silk-Scott Special. Spondon also provided the front forks, which were patterned after Ceriani items. The rear swingarm was a traditional unbraced tube-section arm suspended by a pair of Girling shocks. Borrani wire wheels were standard. Brakes were Lockheed or Spondon hydraulic disc with a cast iron rotor at the front, and a drum at the rear. A double disc setup at the front was optional - you could also substitute a twin-leading shoe drum if you were leery of that newfangled disc brake witchcraft. The bodywork was similar to that of the Silk-Scott Special, with a slab-sided aluminum fuel tank (available in 14 and 18 litre displacement) and locking sidepanels. The resulting machine was cleanly styled and quite modern looking. It was also remarkably light weight – only 305 lbs dry, featherweight for a liquid-cooled 650cc machine. This, along with the well-developed chassis, contributed to excellent handling that was praised by reviewers and owners alike.
Silk 700S Motorbike Brochure
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Production was slow but steady, and in 1976 the operation was taken over by Furmanite International Group. 1977 saw the introduction of an updated Mark 2 700S dubbed the “Sabre”. The engine compression was raised slightly to bump power to a claimed 48 bhp, and the engine cases were given a cosmetic redesign with finned cylinder jackets. A new seat and instruments were also installed. Campagnolo cast wheels were an available option, and with these installed the Silk looked like a thoroughly modern machine that belied its antiquated roots. If they were expensive at the beginning of production in 1975, they were breathtakingly priced by the time production ended in 1979 – at which point the retail was nearly £2500. The operation ceased in the face of steady losses (at least £200 per machine, despite nearly doubling in price since 1975) and increasingly strict emissions laws on the horizon threatening the very existence of street-legal two-strokes.

Silk production ended after only 138 examples were produced, making the 700S a rare and highly coveted machine that is highly prized among British bike aficionados. It is exceptional when a Silk-Scott Special or a 700S changes hands, and owners are a dedicated lot who hold their bikes in high esteem. After all, what other British machine offers some of the best handling available in the 1970s in an exceptionally lightweight package with sophisticated two-stroke power? The Silk was the product of George Silk’s enthusiasm for the refinement and potential of the venerable Scott engine, dropped into a modern chassis that could challenge the traditional four-stroke hierarchy in Britain.
Silk 700S Brochure Specifications
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 Interesting Links
Silk-Scott Reference Page with excerpts from "Yowl", the Scott enthusiast's magazine
Roger Moss Engineering, UK-based Scott specialist
The Vintangent on a Silk-Scott Special sold by Bonhams
Motorcycle Classics on the Silk 700S
Motorcycle Classics on the Scott Flying Squirrel
Rider Magazine Retrospective Silk 700S Mark 2 Sabre
Review and history of the Silk 700S

In Praise of Slow

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BMW K100RS Honda VFR400R Cabot Trail
On the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton with my dad, circa 2004.

Let’s get one thing straight. I’ve done plenty of wheelies. I’ve dragged parts in turns, my own and my bike’s. I’ve ridden far in excess of the posted limit. I’ve woven through traffic at triple digit speeds. I’ve done many a stupid thing on two wheels, and I’ve been fortunate enough to live to ride another day.

And now, I’m quite content to ride as slow as I goddamn well please.



You see, I’ve always ridden sport bikes, or bikes with sporting pretensions. In the sport bike community, there is a certain level of expectation with regards to your capabilities. This expectation is twofold: you have the dumb, inexperienced squids who expect you to ride at terminal velocity along the highway and wheelie at every opportunity, and then you have the seasoned sport riding veterans who expect you to be able to drag your knee through every switchback. The first group judges your skill (and the quality of a machine) exclusively on its ability to go vertical and how quickly you can achieve multiples of the speed limit. The second group judges based on your ability to keep up with them through a tight set of twisties without dying violently in the process.

I fall into another, seldom mentioned category of rider – seasoned, skilled, and having a strong sense of self-preservation. I am a slow rider. And I am here to proselytize my style of riding, and speak in praise of slow.

I began riding bikes when I was 17. I was young and foolish, as everyone is when they first hop on the back of a bike fueled by a mixture of high test and ego, and I did Very Stupid Things. Usually in pursuit of other, more experienced idiots. I associated with a group of extremely fast and young riders who favoured high-powered Japanese machines (your typical rice-rocket crowd, as I often heard dumb cagers generalize us). These were reckless, fearless, and stupid folks. Among the younger members, usually under 25, macho bravado was a part of the initiation – you weren’t accepted until you’d “kept up” with the group on a daredevil run or done a few high-speed monos. These folks were balanced out by the veterans, mostly 30 or older, who dismissed these young punks as the dumb kids they were and blew them off when the going got twisty.

The problem with riding in North America is that most provinces and states have lax licensing laws and laughably easy processes to get a full, unrestricted license. Graduated licensing is a joke, if it exists at all – most places have two categories, small or big bike, and the only difference between the two is the size of the bike you use to take the practical test. I earned (and I use that term loosely) my unrestricted license by taking a one-page multiple-choice test and then performing a slalom and a figure-eight in the parking lot on a 1000cc BMW. After an hour at the DMV, I was allowed to buy and ride anything with two wheels I pleased. No restrictions, no training, no graduated licensing. “You can ride in the parking lot without falling over? Here’s your license, have fun.”

Thus the market for small, easy to handle bikes in the US and Canada is virtually nonexistent. Everyone wants the biggest, baddest, fastest, most chrome-laden penis extension they can afford the moment they get their license. The cruiser crowd looks down their noses at 1200cc Sportsters as girly bikes, and sport riders consider a 600cc supersport a “beginner” bike. And so we have completely inexperienced riders hopping aboard massively powerful, hair-trigger machines they have no business touching, let alone piloting on public roads. Freedom is great, until you end up paying insurance and registration premiums to cover the mistakes of other riders.

The cult of speed and dick-wavery among sportbike riders is as astonishing as it is embarrassing. It seems to be a prerequisite that every inexperienced rider who buys a sporty machine has to be an arrogant, boastful dumbass who will proclaim their (nonexistent) abilities to anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot. And I fell into that trap just like everyone else did. The community becomes a bad case of blind-leading-the-blind and incessant one-upmanship that leads to bruised egos, smashed bikes, and far too many deaths. It’s only after years of riding and building your experience, and a few serious schoolings from experienced riders, that you will realize how idiotic it all is and how dumb you were. It’s at that point that you will become one of the vets, and you will despise those snot-nosed squids going around measuring chicken strips and boasting about how great they are at wheelies. Getting there is a long, arduous process, and you may never demand the respect of other riders, you can only earn it. Weekend warriors, squids, and born-again R.U.B.s need not apply.

Honda NC24 VFR400R
Me and my NC24 in my young and stupid days.

I began my riding career just trying to keep up. I had a Honda NC24 at the time, which was a 400cc supersport with all of 60hp, and most rides had me pegging the tach and the speedo in a futile attempt to stay within sight of the throttle jockeys on far faster machines. Unlike most nitwits my age I abstained from buying the most powerful bike I could afford, although the prospect of owning an overpowered widowmaker was tempting on the days I was getting dusted on the straights. I soon realized that keeping up with the group was a pointless exercise and I settled into a pattern – start the ride at the back of the group, and stay there. I made no attempt to keep up. My fear and sense of mortality overwhelmed my reptilian ego and I became one of the “slow” guys from an early point in my riding life.

While this attitude didn’t endear me to the squids, it did earn me respect from the vets. I recall one day a large group of us met at a (supposedly) abandoned airstrip somewhere out in the boonies of New Brunswick to do some drag racing. We had our fun, discovered the airstrip wasn’t quite as abandoned as we had been informed, and hightailed it late in the day. I spent some time with my bike pegged at redline trying to keep up with the group, as per usual, and my bike started running a bit rough from being thrashed. I was fed up and tired of even attempting to keep up.

We stopped at a restaurant for dinner that evening before starting the ride back home, which would entail about an hour and a half following a series of fast backroads. I joined a group of older riders and before we set out I told them straight up: I didn’t want to ride like a moron trying to keep up. I told them not to worry about me or expect me to keep up, just ride their usual pace and I’d catch up when they stopped. I was met with some silent gazes but no commentary, and we set out. The ride was uneventful and I was content to be a backmarker, taking in the scenery and learning the road, dodging the odd bit of wildlife along the way.

We arrived back in our hometown and stopped at the house of one of the riders to relax and scrape the bugs off our faces. One of the elder guys, a soft-spoken fellow who rode a GSX-R 1000 with aplomb, pulled me aside and told me something that has stuck with me ever since. He said that by putting my ego aside and admitting that I didn’t want to ride like an idiot to keep up with them, I had earned a great deal of respect and brownie points among the seasoned guys.

They were used to cocksure squids that would brag about their abilities and utterly fail to back up their smack talk out on the road, usually endangering themselves and anyone within skidding distance on the asphalt in the process of trying to keep up with the big boys. I was the only kid who admitted I was inexperienced and who rode at my own pace without trying to impress anyone. From that day forward I embraced that macho-be-damned attitude and rode my way. I ride for myself, not to impress some turkey on a Yamondakawazuki.

I soon tired of the macho head butting and dangerous cat-and-mouse riding we usually ended up doing and I quietly stopped joining the group rides. More and more accidents were occurring, and a string of fatalities - five in one season, in a tight-knit community of several hundred riders – finally convinced me that this lifestyle wasn’t sustainable and I would be better off on my own. The final straw was when I made the cardinal mistake of buying a Ducati, a quick way to alienate yourself from the Japcrap crowd in those days. At the time Ducati wasn’t the sexy, popular option it is today. They were the choice of masochistic oddballs who paid a big premium to get less power, less refinement, and a whole lot more maintenance. So when I bought my 916, my reception was… in a word, vitriolic. That, in my mind, was my official departure point from that crowd.

Ducati 916 Superbike

Since then I’ve remained a lone-wolf rider, someone who prefers to ride solo and at my own pace. I shy away from group rides and prefer not to share road space with anyone. If I get caught up in an impromptu group on the backroads, I either wave them past or put some distance between us, depending on the situation. If I must accompany someone, I only do so with strict rules on how things will proceed, and I will not ride with them again if they do anything to endanger me, or if they show a lack of respect for my pace. Thems the rules, take ‘em or leave ‘em.

I’ve developed a smooth style of riding that focuses on precision and maintaining a fluid stringing of corners together. Maximum lean angles and eyeball-flattening speeds are not my aims. I’ve learned over 10 short years of riding that in The Real World roads are not absolute or inviolable no matter how many times you travel the same route. Gravel and sand gets pulled through the apexes by dumb drivers clipping the shoulder. Potholes and frostheaves appear in the spring. Bad patchwork and tarsnakes materialize mid-summer. Fallen leaves slick the road surface in the fall. And all season long you will be encountering clueless and distracted drivers - usually mid-corner, in your lane, in a blind decreasing radius bend. I am not scared by my bike or my own mistakes - more than anything I’m scared of other drivers. I ride with a wide margin of safety to compensate for the idiocy of everyone else on the road. I was once given a simple but effective piece of advice in my early days of riding - ride like everyone else on the road is trying to kill you.

I know many people who turn to the track as a relatively safe and fully controlled outlet for their need for speed. I, however, subscribe to Hunter S. Thompson’s riding philosophy:

When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."

I’ve always ridden on the street. I will always ride on the street. I’ve developed and honed my skills there, and I will continue to apply them there. I don’t have any desire to sink oodles of money into trackdays when that money could be better spent on gear, gas and road trips (and, in the case of my Ducati, maintenance).

My philosophy is thus precision and fluidity within a safe margin of error. I like Keith Code’s analogy of your attention being the equivalent of a ten-dollar bill. Each action cost a portion of your "funds". If you use up your ten bucks you are unable to devote any additional attention to unforeseen variables or tasks. If you overdraw, you screw up - and possibly crash. Every action costs attention – your goal is to become so proficient that your actions only cost a small amount of your tenner, so you will have more attention to spare to hone your skills and get through the corner faster. The context is for racing, but the idea can easily be applied to the road as well. Riding at 9/10ths or maxed out on the road is reckless and suicidal. Your maximum pace in street riding should not exceed 7 or 8 tenths, leaving enough margin to anticipate and correct for road conditions, other drivers, or wildlife spoiling the party.

The next time you see a rider, be it on the road or in a video, observe their mannerisms on the machine. Watch how they sit, how they shift their body around, how they position their head and where they look. Then look at their performance, see how their bike moves through the turns and how they handle the machine. Odds are most people will be timid and overly conservative, or will be balls-to-the-wall and flighty. The first group appears hesitant, stiff, and ill at ease, and pick their way through turns with a multitude of inputs. They don't trust the bike or their actions. The second group looks violent and out of control, flying from one corner to the next in a flurry of unpredictable moves. They are too confident and are on the ragged edge of their ability. Few fall into the happy medium, which is confident smoothness. That is my goal. I want to ride well, not fast. There is an important distinction to be made between the two. I am always working towards the "ideal", and I am constantly honing my abilities.

I also enjoy the act of riding itself – being on the road, seeing the scenery, experiencing the smells. I’m not leaving in the morning with the intention of scrubbing my chicken strips off. I’m going out to explore, enjoy the journey, and bask in the magnificence of the route. I don’t want to have all my attention devoted to extracting that last iota of performance out of my machine, while dodging other drivers and crappy roads. I want to have enough ease to take in the surroundings and enjoy the journey.

You might read all this and think “okay, so why does he ride a sport bike? Sounds like he should have a cruiser or a tourer”. Well some of us like the performance and agility of a sport machine, even if we have no intention of using even half of its potential. I like to feel like I’m taming a vicious and obstinate animal every time I ride, even if I’m doing the speed limit. I like to feel the barely-contained fury of a malevolent machine that demands flawless inputs. I like to sense the subtle feedback and precise response of a tight chassis. You don’t need to ride like a maniac to appreciate the finer points of a sport bike. And you certainly don’t have to resign yourself to some stodgy mount just because you aren’t dragging your knees everywhere. As long as you don’t mind the lack of comfort, anyway.

In fact, no one who rides a sport bike on the street is using it to its full potential - if they claim otherwise they are either a loudmouthed squid or a damned liar. Anyone who claims to be an expert isn’t. A seasoned racer would not be able to extract 100% out of a superbike under the best track conditions, let alone on the street.

That doesn’t mean I pootle along at the speed limit everywhere I go. I don’t ride like a granny, and I hate pig-headed jerkoffs who H.O.G. the lane and clutter up the twisties without letting quicker riders past. When conditions are right and the roads are clear, I’ll drop the hammer and have some fun, and I enjoy a high speed blast as much as the next adrenaline junkie. There is a time and place for such shenanigans, and in my experience they are few and far between while on the street. If you recognize that and respect your machine, your abilities, and the conditions around you, you’ll be a far more comfortable and confident rider. That is my definition of slow - respecting the variables and the conditions and riding with the intent of making it home in one piece. My slow might be far faster than the average rider, but it is within a wide margin of safety and it is well within my comfort zone.

The older I get, the more I understand that surviving the day is far more important than setting a record pace. Fast has its place, and I respect riders who can ride quickly and smoothly without looking like a goddamned high-speed trainwreck in progress. But I’m here to praise slow. I'm here to proclaim the virtues of enjoying the ride and the experience, and riding within your capabilities, without making every ride into a do-or-die misadventure. It's time for a change in sport riding culture; no more dick-waving, no more ego clashing, no more squidly pursuits on public roads. There is a time and a place for fast, and it isn't on the street. I for one am willing to admit: I am a sport bike rider, and I am slow.

Ducati 916 Superbike

Gilera CX125 - Beginning the Future

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Gilera CX125 Motorcycle
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Up until recently there was an interesting category of sporting 125cc two-strokes that dominated the European beginner bike market. Countries like Italy and Britain restricted new teenaged riders to 125cc machines as a “learner” category that was well catered to by most of the major manufacturers. These learner specials often had race-replica sport-bike styling and sharp dynamics to appeal to the masses of hormone-addled 17 year olds who wanted to look fast, even if their machine couldn’t have more than 15bhp by law. Four-stroke 125s were always available but the hot ticket up until recent years was always a rip snorting two-stroke that could be derestricted once you had completed your learning period. While the four-strokes and two-strokes made the same power when restricted, the smoker could be uncorked afterwards to unleash the full fury of the mighty single – as much as 35-odd horsepower, manic power in a machine that scarcely cracks 250lbs with a full tank of fuel.


Gilera CX125 Motorcycle
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Most of these learner specials are by and large inspired by their bigger stablemates – thus you could get a miniaturized Yamaha YZF-R, Honda NSR/CBR, Aprilia RS, or even an 8/10ths replica of the iconic Ducati 916 sold as the Cagiva Mito. There was, however, one notable exception to this rule where a manufacturer went all in and gambled on producing a totally unique design that would break the mould. Gilera produced what was possibly the weirdest 125 sport bike of all time – the short lived and radically-styled Gilera CX125, which would quickly earn a status as a cult special that had some of the most futuristic design to ever grace a “beginner” bike.

Gilera is one of those unfortunate cases of a once-great marque that has recently fallen into obscurity and the realm of the mundane. Gilera was once a mighty force in motorcycle competition, producing some of the most advanced Grand Prix machines of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Gilera today is a mere footnote in the history of Italian motorcycle brands and a feather in the cap of parent company Piaggio, who debased the once-storied name it by slapping its logo onto a series of dull scooters. It wasn’t always so.


Giuseppe Gilera Motorbike
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Giuseppe Gilera founded his namesake company in 1911, after having apprenticed with the firms Bianchi, Moto-Reve, and Bucher and Zeda as a mechanic. He had built his first complete motorcycle in 1909, a 317cc overhead valve single of his own design. Gilera began as a small racing team, but a fortuitous meeting with a wealthy motorcycle rider who was impressed with Giuseppe’s talents led to the creation of a proper manufacture. A factory was established in Arcore, which would remain the perennial home of Gilera until Piaggio shuttered the works in 1993.

Gilera Rondine Supercharged 500-4 Motorcycle
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Gilera achieved some successes in racing with sidevalve and overhead valve singles and twins through the 1920s and early 30s, but it would be their four-cylinder racing machines that would establish the marque as a world-class manufacturer that could compete at the highest levels of racing. In 1936 the company was given the opportunity to purchase the 500cc Rondine (Swallow) four-cylinder competition engine, a design that would define the company's racing successes for the next twenty years. The Rondine four was an evolution of the single-cam Gianini Remor Bonmartini (GRB) air-cooled engine designed in 1923 by noted engineers Carlo Gianini and Piero Remor. It was the genesis of the modern four-cylinder layout; it had an across the frame transverse layout that distinguished it from earlier longitudinally mounted fours, initially introduced to aid air cooling but also having the benefit of allowing a much shorter and more nimble chassis. While today we take multi-cylinder machines for granted, in the 1920s and 30s all levels of racing were dominated by singles (and the odd twin), favoured for their simplicity, light weight, and compact dimensions. In fact four-stroke singles remained competitive in Grand Prix racing right up until the 1950s, when multis finally began to reach maturity and consistently win races.

The Rondine was an evolution of the GRB developed in the 1930s while under the ownership of aviation concern Compagnia Nazionale Aeronautica– it shared the basic architecture of the GRB but benefited from liquid cooling and supercharging to produce an impressive 60hp, with later revisions pushing 87hp. While fast, the CNA-Rondine suffered from reliability issues that hampered its success.

Gilera 500 4-C Grand Prix Motorcycle
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Gilera purchased the Rondine racers from CNA and campaigned the machines during the interwar period with some racing successes and several world records. Supercharging was banned from competition in 1946 and Piero Remor, who was now working for Gilera, developed a new engine design in 1947-48. The 500 4-C air-cooled four would prove to be one of the most successful racing engine of the 1950s, and remained the machine to beat until Gilera retired from racing in 1957, winning the 500cc World Championship in ‘52, ‘53, ‘54, ‘55 and ‘57.

So how do we segway from four-cylinder, four-stroke Grand Prix winners to a weird and futuristic two-stroke single aimed at teenaged riders? This way:

After the company withdrew from competition in '57, Gilera changed direction abruptly. They downplayed their hitherto successful line of four-stroke singles and began to focus on motocross and off-road events in association with independent specialist Elmeca. Sales declined through the 1960s and by 1968 the company was in receivership. In 1969 Piaggio took over the ailing company and began to restructure the lineup. After the takeover Gilera made a range of small four-strokes and a few interesting prototypes, but they would not become truly successful until they returned to the production of motocross and big trailie machines in the early 1980s. At this point street machines were relegated to small two-strokes, as well as a limited revival of their storied Saturno name with a sport bike built around big four-stroke singles taken from their line of large trail bikes. Things looked bright for the marque in the late 1980s. The factory had been modernized and the products updated significantly by 1985, and Gilera had built a reputation for advanced engineering and for producing very competitive machines in a variety of categories.

Gilera 125cc Two Stroke Single Cutaway
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By the end of the 1980s Gilera had produced a range of successful and advanced liquid-cooled two-stroke 125s that were sold in both street (including the RV, MX, KZ and KK series) and off-road (R1 and RTX) guises. The 56x50.5mm liquid-cooled single shared among the various models was a clean-sheet design introduced in the 1984 in the RV125. The loop-scavenged engine featured reed valve induction and a six speed gearbox, much like you’d expect from any Japanese two-stroke of the era, but unlike the Asian competition the Gilera mill had a counter-rotating balance shaft, CDI electronic ignition, and an electric starter. Reviewers accustomed to the broken-blender vibration of typical two-strokes noted the smoothness of the engine compared to everything else on the market. And it didn’t sacrifice any muscle for that velvety power – initial versions made around 25 horsepower, later highly tuned SP variants had as much as 35 hp. To us modern riders habituated to four-strokes, that sort of power out of a street-legal 1/8th litre machine is unfathomable, and even the latest crop of 125s scarcely produce any more power than Gilera was extracting from their tiny singles in the late 80s.

Gilera SP 01 125cc Two Stroke Motorbike
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The KZ and KK were the first fully-faired 125 sportbikes to be produced by Gilera in the mid-80s, and garnered accolades from the press for great handling and impressive performance in the category. These machines would evolve into the advanced 1988 SP-01, which combined extremely modern styling and high-quality suspension components with a highly tuned 35hp engine. The mighty little 125 featured a sky-high 13.5:1 compression ratio, a 32mm Dell’Orto carburettor, and an exhaust valve (dubbed the Automatic Power Tuning System) to boost midrange performance. The frame was a massive (for a 125) twin-spar beam design that appeared to be aluminium at first glance, but was in fact steel. The whole package weighed approximately 250 lbs dry and was capable of a claimed top speed of 106 mph. The design was refined with the introduction of the SP-02 in 1990, which begat the Crono in 1991. Looking at the SP/Crono you’d easily mistake it for a mid-90s 250 or 400cc machine. The SP-02 and Crono even featured 40mm inverted Marzocchi forks, a luxury normally reserved for the most advanced superbikes of the era, and looked more like a high-tech, high-quality Japanese home-market mini-sportbike than a European learner bike.

Gilera SP 02 125cc Two Stroke Motorbike
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Gilera CX Motorbike Prototype 1989
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The CX design was heavily based on the SP/Crono architecture, with styling by noted Italian designer Luciano Marabese. Marabese was quite prolific during his tenure at Gilera – he also penned the KZ, KK, Dakota, MX, XR and SP models, and would go on to sketch the Moto Guzzi Centauro and Griso. The CX concept was unveiled at the 1989 Milan EICMA show enclosed in a plexiglass display. The prototype CX (supposedly named for its low drag coefficient) was like any other concept bike – impressive to look at, but scarcely believable as a potential production machine. Here was a tiny sport machine with fully enveloping bodywork that looked like something straight out of a Japanese cartoon, with a remarkable single sided suspension – on both ends. While single-sided rear swingarms had been around on production machines for a few years already (you can thank Honda for that innovation with their patented Pro-Arm), nobody had seen a single-sided front swingarm on anything except the ELF experimental racers. Indeed, the CX was clearly inspired by the ELF machines, particularly the 1984 ELF2 with it disc-shaped alloy wheels and all-enveloping bodywork.

1984 Honda ELF ELF2 Motorbike
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It was scarcely believable that the CX would be slated for series production. But it was true, and it would hit the market in 1991 as an honest-to-God working motorcycle that featured the same space-age styling and bonkers suspension that the 1989 prototype had introduced. Not only that, it was only slightly more expensive than the Crono 125 that it shared showroom space with. And with good reason – the CX was essentially just a Crono with a funny front end and some swoopy bodywork.

Gilera CX125 Motorcycle Concept 1989
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The styling was outlandish and thoroughly modern, but not groundbreaking. Fully enclosed bodywork and highly streamlined designs were all the rage in the late 80s (see also Bimota DB1 and Tesi 1-D, Ducati Paso, and Honda Hurricane) though the CX took the theme a bit further by extending the beak of the front end over the front wheel for better aerodynamics. The 17-inch alloy wheels, manufactured by Grimeca along with the brakes, also fit this aerodynamic theme with a large lens-shaped central hub. The marketing material touted the CX as being so slippery that it was as fast as its more powerful (but unnamed) competitors. In reality the claimed top speed was down slightly compared to the Crono and SP at just a shade over 100 mph.

Gilera CX125 Motorcycle Frame
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Under the bodywork the production CX125 shared the same twin spar steel frame and engine as the Crono, with a slight revision to the exhaust system to boost midrange at the expense of some of the top end. Compression was reduced a half point to 13:1. Claimed power was now 30 hp versus the Crono’s 35, and the APTS valve was controlled electronically rather than mechanically.

Gilera CX125 Motorcycle Suspension Chassis
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The front suspension, manufactured for Gilera by Paioli, appears highly advanced at a glance but is actually remarkably simple – and it offers no real advantages over traditional telescopic forks. In fact, it is a telescopic fork - singular. The best summary of the CX front suspension is that it is the front landing gear of an aircraft applied to a motorcycle. The wheel hub and brake is attached to a swinging arm that connects inline with a 45mm telescopic tube held centrally by the, um, “triples” mounted in the traditional location. Steering is direct, in that the handlebars move the triples, which rotate the front assembly, with a control arm keeping the whole shebang straight (without the linkage connecting the swingarm to the triples the telescopic tube would rotate freely, same as a traditional fork). No hub centre or forkless shenanigans here, it's all quite straightforward once you examine the details.

Gilera CX125 Motorcycle Barber Museum
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Despite looking completely unique the design is actually remarkably conventional – and carries all the same characteristics as a regular front end. Unlike the other funny-front-ends discussed on OddBike previously, the CX offers no appreciable advantage when compared to a traditional telescopic design because it is a telescopic design. Suspension forces are still channelled through the same areas of the frame, and the action is very similar to a regular pair of forks, just merged into a single slider. You still have the age-old problems of stiction, flex, deflection, dive, squat, and geometry changes under compression. Engineering aside, it looks cool - and that was the whole point. The CX wasn’t a groundbreaking machine in anything but styling. It looked (and still looks) like nothing else on two wheels, but under the skin it is pretty straightforward. And easy to manufacture – keep in mind that the CX was intended to be an affordable 125, not an expensive flagship, and only cost a few percent more than the Crono with which is shared showroom space.
Such it was with much of the CX – it was all show, not much substance. The all-encompassing bodywork (with the requisite early-90s dayglo graphics) looked the business but hid the all the conventional bits underneath. The “Integrated Security System” proudly touted in bold script on the tail simply referred to having a locking seat and filler caps. Ignore the time-travelling style and marketing hype and you have a competitive, but not outrageous, 125 sport bike.

In the press the CX was well received. Handling erred on the side of stability balanced by the flickability offered by such a lightweight machine, with a stiff suspension action due to the limited travel of the front end. Praise was sung for the impressive powerband of the tiny engine, which combined adequate midrange with a shrieking top end rush once the exhaust valve opened between 8000 and 12000 rpm. While not torquey engines by any stretch, Gilera 125s were noted for being slightly more tractable than their competition. The reviews are underwhelming for those expecting some far-fetched oddball machine that behaves like nothing else. There is a certain strained quality to the prose that conveys the reviewer’s apparent disappointment with how ordinary the CX was on the road, like they are desperately trying to find a way to make it sound as cool as it looks. It’s not that the CX was completely underwhelming; it was a good bike, but it felt far more conventional than the styling suggested.

Gilera CX125 Motorbike
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While the CX garnered more than its fair share of attention due to its radical styling, it wasn’t particularly popular. Funky looks and nifty front end aside, it performed like the sister Crono model, but was slightly slower and cost more money. Bad formula for a sales success, particularly when you are trying to appeal to speed-craving teenage punks who are more likely to gravitate towards the sexy race-replica with the extra bragging points on the spec sheet rather than the avante-garde styling exercise. It probably didn’t help that popular opinion of the CX varied between “incredibly cool” and “tragically ugly”.

Thus production of the CX125 was discontinued after less than a year and only 1000 examples, about 500 of which were allocated to the Italian home market. Even then there was enough leftover stock for the CX to be sold “new” until 1993, when Piaggio pulled the plug on the Arcore factory, moving the operation to Pontedera and discontinuing Gilera’s motorcycle production. After 1993 Gilera was limited to producing scooters of various descriptions and displacements, which they continue to do today. They did return to racing, winning the 2001 125 GP and 2008 250 GP championships, but the production of street motorcycles was over. A few promising concepts were unveiled in the 2000s that suggested a possible comeback, but they all came to nought – the 2002 Supersport 600 turned out to be vapourware, while a proprietary 839cc V-twin design was poached by Aprilia. It seems Piaggio has developed a reputation for stifling interesting brands and cool models – just ask the Moto Guzzi die hards about all those new sport models they don’t have, or check out the latest (nonexistent) lineup of Laverdas. Sad though it might be, passion doesn’t pay the bills - scooter sales do.

Gilera CX125 Motorbike
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Today hot learner specials like the SP, Crono and CX125 are a dying breed. Increasingly strict emissions laws are putting the squeeze on remaining two-stroke designs, and most companies have abandoned smokers to focus on four-stroke designs, which are far cleaner and more reliable (at the expense of about, oh, 60% of the power). There are a few holdouts that have managed to make two-stroke 125s clean enough to meet Euro III specs (the Aprilia RS125 and Cagiva Mito SP525 being the most notable), but it seems that the future is in four-strokes, much like it was with larger displacement machines in the 1990s.

The Gilera CX125 was a major gamble from a company that was riding high on a string of successes that didn’t pay off in the showrooms - a bold move that is unlikely to ever be seen again, particularly in the accessible price point that the CX targeted. While aesthetically daring, the CX was remarkably straightforward under the skin and far less advanced than its space-age styling suggested. Success or not, the CX was an innovative product produced by an interesting motorcycle company that has since been castrated in the most humiliating way possible: having its once-proud name emblazoned on a series of scooters.

Gilera CX125 Motorcycle Barber
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Interesting Links
Launch review of the CX125
Real Classics comparison of the CX125 and Moto Morini Dart 350

Wakan / Avinton - Franco-American Hybrid

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Wakan One Hundred Motorcycle
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There is a certain brutish elegance to the act of cramming an impossibly huge engine into a tiny chassis. American designers in particular seem to have an affinity for stuffing air-cooled big twins of the Harley Davidson variety into sporting machines. There is something appealing about the incongruence of seeing a shuddering, massively torquey engine with its acres of gleaming billet and chrome overwhelming the appearance of an otherwise lithe machine. While not common, you do have a few choices if you desire a Big McLargehuge motor in a bike with sporting pretensions. Buell and Ecosse catered to the (admittedly limited) air-cooled-Harley-style-45-degree-twin-in-a-sport-slash-muscle-bike market, while Roehr tried to build a supercharged superbike around a V-Rod engine. If you desired something more inspired that wasn’t a cookie-cutter custom or generic café-styled machine, there was always Confederate. The only notable entrant from overseas was Yamaha, who got into the game with their weird but remarkably tame Warrior-powered MT-01.
Wakan Avinton Motorcycle
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So it only makes sense that a French company would champion the cause of big American cruiser power in a sporty machine while citing Carroll Shelby as a major influence. That would be the plot synopsis of Wakan/Avinton, the oddball muscle-sport-bike that has been produced off-and-on in France since the mid-2000s.


Wakan Avinton Motorcycle
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Wakan was the brainchild of French engineer Joël Domergue, who founded the company Engineering and More (Engmore) in 1999 to fulfill a motorcycling fever dream he had had since he was a teen. Domergue began as a nuclear engineer who entered the motorcycle industry in 1993 when he co-founded the Scorpa trials bike manufacturer in Alès, France. A successful trials rider himself, Domergue’s company produced a line of well-respected two-stroke trials machines from 1994 onward. It was during his time at Scorpa that Joël began to formulate a plan to build his dream bike, a machine which he described as a two-wheeled interpretation of the Shelby AC Cobra, a European brawler with American motivation.
Wakan Avinton Motorcycle Air Intake
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The machine would be a stripped down, lightweight, naked sport bike built around a classic American 45-degree air-cooled V-twin. There would be a distinctly American vibe to the entire design and at first glance there would be nothing to suggest it was a European product - it could have just as easily emerged from a shed in the Heartland of ‘Murica as it would from a manufacturer situated in the south of France. The whole act of inserting a ridiculously large motor wherever it will damn well fit is a patently American pursuit in any case - hence the parallels to the Cobra, which was about the tiniest and lightest machine that you could stuff a Ford V8 into this side of a Sunbeam Alpine. Even the choice of name reflected Domergue’s Amerophilia – Wakan is a Sioux Lakota term that loosely translates to “great spirit” or “the divine”, Wakan themselves claiming it meant “sacred” and “incorruptible”.
Wakan Motorbike
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The first prototype hit the show circuit in 2005 and were a sight to behold. Called the One Hundred, the machine featured minimal bodywork and a slender dummy tank surrounded a whopping great 1647cc V-twin engine with a square ratio of 4"x4" (that's 101.6mm x 101.6mm to the metrically inclined) and a 10.3:1 compression ratio that necessitated an electric decompressor just to start the beast. The frame was a simple 3 inch chrome-moly backbone that doubled as the oil tank for the dry sump motor. The swingarm was a double-sided extruded aluminum beam design suspended by a Sachs shock, while Ceriani 46mm upside down forks held things up at the front. The wheels were forged Marchesini alloys, with a single 340mm brake disc up front gripped by a six-piston AJP caliper. The suspension geometry was quite racy – the steering rake was 22 degrees and the wheelbase 54 inches. Not quite Buell XB territory but pretty extreme for what was ostensibly a street-going roadster with a big honking engine in the middle. Projected retail price was in the neighbourhood of $35,000 USD, and the machine was aimed squarely at the American market despite its Gallic origins – they made no pretenses toward abiding by the French 100 hp legal limit, with at least 115 hp on tap and the hint of more if you chose to progress beyond the “Stage 1” engine.
Wakan Motorcycle Engine
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With the simple backbone/oil tank frame hidden underneath the bodywork and the motor hung without cradles or pipework to obstruct the view the Wakan had the appearance of being “all ate up with motor” as Darrell Waltrip so eloquently put it. The fuel was carried in the tailsection, below the seat and aft of the motor, which is why you will find a filler cap in the space normally occupied by the pillion pad. The slender dummy tank above the engine housed the intake, with a dual-butterfly electrically controlled “Vortec” air scoop protruding through where you would normally expect the fuel cap. Some thought the faux-supercharger look of the intake was cheesy, others thought it was a cool touch, and it was functional. In keeping with the Cobra theme a pair of prominent contrasting racing stripes ran fore and aft. Lighting was kept simple with a plain round headlamp up front, with a patented integrated digital display and trip computer (poached from an Aprilia SXV supermoto). The look was sleek, aggressive, muscular, and compact, giving the appearance of a clean-shaven street fighter who was laying off the booze but who would still tear your head off if provoked. There were references to cafe-racer culture and American muscle cars, with an overall high-quality appearance that wasn't overwrought or cheesy (intake scoop aside).
Wakan Motorbike Fuel Tank
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Responses were mixed. Some members of the press and many armchair critics were quick to draw unfair comparisons to Erik Buell’s machines, and dismissed the Wakan as an overpriced toy built around an OCC-special motor. Many a bad joke about the French being pompous surrender monkeys was made. The comment threads overflowed with desk-jockeys proclaiming the Wakan a loser before it even hit the market. The old lines in the sand were being drawn – on one side, the “modern” crowd who worshipped at the altar of speed and engineering, on the other the “traditionalists” who praised the soul and butt-scooting torque of a bloody great American twin. Where the Wakan sought to bridge the divide between these two groups, it simply ended up exposing the fault line between them.
Wakan Avinton Motorcycle Roadster
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However, this bizarre machine smote a few of us. We understood what Domergue was trying to accomplish, and appreciated the effort. He certainly wasn't the first to apply the concept - Matt Chambers has been producing the Confederate Hellcat to much acclaim since the mid-90s, and Erik Buell had been stuffing Harley motors into sport chassis since the 80s. But none of them really looked like the Wakan, which had a rather elegant style that other sporting bruisers often lacked. Buells are engineering-intensive and purposeful (read: function over good looks), while Confederates are elemental and raw (read: brutal and menacing). The Wakan had a muscular beauty and clean design that set it apart. I recall reading about the Wakan for the first time in a Cycle World article published in April 2007. Peter Egan rode an early example and wrote a favourable review, noting that there were hopes to open an American factory, an idea he personally supported.
Wakan 1647cc Motor Engine
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Whatever Peter’s opinion was, I was entranced by the concept of this ridiculous but impressive machine that wrapped sporting bits around a comically large billet-clad engine that looked like it fell off a B-17 Flying Fortress. Then there was the seduction of the performance that such a combination could offer – here was an engine that produced 115hp and 115 pound-feet-of-tugboat-twisting-All American Torque in a bike that was claimed to weigh all of about 400 lbs dry. The sort of go that a colleague of mine, who has more experience with big American engines, described as “rip your arms out of their sockets and beat you over the head with them while rattling the fillings out of your teeth” power (“like riding a gorilla”). Sure, hyperactive sportbikes with time-and-space-disrupting thrust are fun, but in The Real World massive midrange punch from a grunty motor is a fantastic way to shorten the distance between corners and stoplights. Not that the Wakan was slow at the top end - it was capable of a claimed top speed of over 150 miles per hour, which is “good luck hanging on” speed for a big naked bike.
Wakan Avinton Engine Motor
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That monster motor was supplied by American specialist Smith & Smith, better known as S&S, who have become the go-to supplier of go-fast bits for American iron and complete Harley-pattern crate motors. Generally every chopper and custom builder worth his salt is using an S&S as a more powerful alternative to an off-the-shelf Harley twin, which makes it an even more unusual choice for a “sport” machine. The 100 ci “Super Stock” is part of the small S&S collection – as ridiculous as that may sound to those of us weaned on Asian and European machines, 1647cc is small potato-potato in the land of Budweiser and monster trucks. The Super Stock line is based on Harley Davidson OHV four-cam Sportster Evolution architecture, which is the “small block” of Harley motors, Twin-Cam and big-twin Evolution (and S&S’s proprietary X-Wedge) being the “big blocks”. Sportster engines have more compact dimensions but are not as well supported in the aftermarket and are limited in their maximum displacement - if you simply must have 2000+ ccs of reciprocating mass you will have to look elsewhere.
Wakan Avinton Engine
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Unlike the Twin-Cam (and previous big twins – the lineage can be traced back directly to the Knucklehead introduced in 1936) the Sportster series has a semi-unit gearbox housing that allows the use of a separate gearbox and primary drive but carries it in a mount that is integrated into the crankcases. They also use a quad-cam arrangement with widely staggered pushrods. Each cam has a single lobe driving an individual pushrod for each of the four valves – the Twin-Cam has two (duh), one for each cylinder, while the Evolution big twin had a single cam for all four valves. This allows the crankcase to be considerably narrower as the camshafts are a lot shorter.
Wakan Motorcycle Tank
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Like any Harley-pattern engine, the intake is a y-shaped channel split between the two cylinders. In the Wakan fuel was delivered by a single 41mm downdraught Keihin flatslide carburettor. Devil produced the exhaust systems for all Wakan models. The gearbox is a five-speed unit provided by American specialist Andrews, with a proprietary dry clutch design and belt-driven primary. Final drive was by chain. The engines were assembled by S&S for Wakan. As such any S&S dealer could service the Wakan, and owners could make use of their extensive catalogue of hop-up parts should they desire some extra oomph.
Wakan 100 Motorcycle
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By 2009 a few examples of the Wakan One Hundred, which was now being referred to as the Roadster, had been built and were being canvassed to journalists around the world. Reviews were largely favourable, and as you might expect testers often commented on the odd combination of sporty ergonomics and lazy, thundering motor that produced massive punch across the rev range. Shifting was notably good considering the rough character of the motor, not that you need to shift much when you are making over 100 lb/ft of torque at around 2000 rpm. Nobody complained about the handling though one review hinted that the Sachs shock was not up to snuff, particularly on a bike that was now quoted at damn near $50,000 USD (33,500€ in 2009). Alan Cathcart charitably declared the single six-piston front brake as “OK”, which loosely translates to “unimpressive”. The main complaints leveled against the One Hundred were the slightly uncomfortable ergonomics, a few cheap components, and the exorbitant price tag. While the price isn't exactly affordable, it wasn't obscene considering the components. A S&S crate motor with an Andrews gearbox and a primary drive would run you about $10,000 or more, not including any hot-rod parts, or the fueling, or the ignition... Tally up the parts cost and you'll realize that you would be hard pressed to build something better for less money.
Wakan 100 Motorbike
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Unfortunately demand for an expensive, hand built, oddball French motorcycle was limited after 2008. A special edition with upgraded brakes, exhausts and some performance enhancements called the Track Racer was unveiled and promoted as part of the 50th anniversary of S&S in 2008, but didn’t progress past the prototype stage. Wakan always in the shadow of other marques building sporting machines around big American twins – on the low end, you had Buell, while in the high-end you had Confederate and Ecosse. The Wakan was somewhere between the two (in price and in specification), but was unable to carve out a niche in the market. The company canvassed for investors and announced plans to open a US factory, but nobody was forthcoming with capital following the economic collapse. Wakan struggled through the recession like many other small marques, ultimately succumbing to financial problems and going into liquidation in May 2011.
Wakan Avinton Motorcycle
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But all was not lost. In late 2011 the factory, spares, prototypes and all the company’s patents were purchased by investor Cédric Klein, a veteran of heavy industry with an interest in motorcycles. The motorcycle remained unchanged, but the marketing wasn’t. Wakan was dead and buried – the name was changed to Avinton (with vaguely aeronautical connotations) and the previous company became unmentionable. Domergue’s contributions were never acknowledged; despite the fact the company was his concept and had been under his control less than a year before.
Wakan Avinton Motorcycle
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Avinton relaunched the lineup in early 2012. The One Hundred became the Collector, which was offered in three flavours – Roadster, GT, and Race (the only difference between the three being the height of the handlebars). The Track Racer prototype was rebadged and given a new set of brakes and wheels, but was otherwise almost identical to what had been unveiled 2008. The Shelby Cobra connection was still emphasized, but now the Wak… Erm, “Avinton” was marketed as a luxury lifestyle product produced by a passionate boutique brand. The Collector is presented as a handcrafted lifetime product, a machine that an (admittedly wealthy) enthusiast can purchase and maintain for decades. As of 2013 prices start at 28,345€. Much ado is being made about how each machine can be tailored to the owner’s desires with a vast series of optional extras, both aesthetic and functional. There is even a “Super Snake” performance package that offers, and I quote: “the first motorcycle in the world to be equipped with four front break (sic) discs!”.
Avinton Collector
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Avinton is currently expanding production and distribution of the Collector across Europe, with EPA homologation in the US an ongoing process. They expect to be represented in the Asian market by early 2014. Around 30 machines were built in 2012, and they hope to produce between 60 and 80 machines for 2013, which is already more than were produced by Wakan over a period of six years.
Avinton Wakan Collector Motorcycle
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One gets the impression that Avinton wishes to downplay the role of Domergue and his original company and re-purpose the brand as a "luxury lifestyle" accessory. The motorcycle they are selling is clearly unchanged from the Wakan days, and all specifications are identical if you ignore the optional extras and add-on packages. There is less emphasis on the product being an interesting motorcycle that is the product of one man's dream, more about the bike being a flashy accessory for wealthy clients who want an exclusive plaything tailored to their whims. Their website and press releases are filled with the sort of canned marketing jargon and trite clichés that makes honest bike builders and enthusiasts cringe, though they certainly aren't the worst offenders in this regard. Regardless of the connotations of these alterations, the new direction appears to be more successful in generating sales and attention for the marque even if the original spirit of Domergue's endeavour has been lost somewhere along the way. I wish Avinton well, but I would prefer to own a Wakan.
Wakan Open Road Motorcycle
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Interesting Links:
The (now defunct) site of Wakan's Swiss distributor
Motorcyclist on the Wakan One Hundred
Avinton Official Website
Avinton Facebook Page
Wakan Track Racer preview
Interview with Cedric Klein of Avinton
Wakan photos on Silodrome

Fischer MRX - Korean-American Supersport

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Fischer MRX 650 Motorcycle
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Lets say you want to buy a middleweight twin-cylinder sportbike. Think for a moment of how many options you have. No, not the Ducati 848 – that would have been in the Superbike category up until Ducati had the racing rulebook changed. The Kawasaki Ninja 650 and its SFV650 competition from Suzuki are hardly sportbikes, targeted as they are at beginning riders and lacking proper suspensions out of the box. Think hard and you’ll realize the twin-cylinder supersport market is virtually nonexistent, despite constant mumblings and half-hearted demands from those shadowy figures simply referred to as “enthusiasts”. For the last 15 years if you wanted a small, light, sweet running (but not overpowered) ‘twin in a nimble chassis, your go-to option was to buy a Suzuki SV650 and promptly upgrade the stock suspension and brakes.

Daniel Fischer saw an opportunity to fill this gap in the market as well as build an American sport bike that could compete with the Japanese at their own game – with good performance, good quality, and good value. The American-made Fischer MRX would be the culmination of several years of trial, error, setbacks, and extensive development. The result was that unicorn that enthusiasts have pined for for many years – a capable twin-cylinder supersport that was appealing but wouldn’t break the bank.



However the MRX didn't start life as a value-conscious sportbike. It began as an attempt to launch production of a proper American superbike that could kick ass and chew bubble gum (but it's all out of gum) with the big boys from Asia and Europe.

Fischer MRX Motorbike
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It was 2001 and Daniel Fischer, an AMA roadracer and former Aprilia Cup competitor based in Chicago, Illinois, had a vision for an American-made superbike. There really was no competition. Walter Roehrich was still tinkering with prototypes and wouldn't unveil his ill-fated V-Roehr until 2007. Harley Davidson had made a half-assed attempt at a road-going capital-S Superbike with their VR1000, which was only road-legal if you happened to live in Poland and had $50,000 to blow on an orphan Motor Company folly. Erik Buell was toiling away under Harley's thumb, limited to an apathetic dealer network and to using antiquated Sportster mills - his modern Helicon 1125 engine wouldn't arrive until 2008, mere months before his company went under in the wake of the economic downturn. The market thus had a massive gap that Fischer hoped to fill with a made-in-the-USA product that would tug at the usual patriotic American heartstrings. It would be a modern sportbike that would revitalize the stagnant American motorcycle industry, a machine developed and built in the US of A by hardworking American companies. Somewhere in the Midwest a bald eagle let out a visceral screech across the plains as the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the background.
Fischer MR1000 Motorcycle
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The Fischer MR (named after Dan's son, Mercer) concept was to build a modern and highly refined chassis around an existing engine: the first choice being the Rotax V990 60-degree V-twin, which you might remember from such motorcycles as the Aprilia Mille and Tuono. Thus the prototypes would be dubbed the MR1000. Famed Wisconsin engineering firm Gemini Technology Systems (who, as Fischer would continually tout, designed the much-lauded Harley Davidson VR1000 frame) would develop the new platform based on their experience in Superbike racing, with a sprinkling of MotoGP know-how for good measure. Fischer claimed that Gemini got on board quite by chance, contacting him after he placed a help wanted ad in the AMA classifieds in 2001. Motorcycle designer Glynn Kerr (who describes himself as a "freelance" designer but has several notable projects under his belt, including the Yamaha TDM850 and the Voxan VB-1) fleshed out the aesthetics of the machine.
Rotax V990 Aprilia BRP Engine
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Production was slated to begin sometime in 2004 and some promising development work was done through 2003, with several running prototypes hitting the road. Unfortunately there was the small matter of Aprilia taking exception to Rotax offering Fischer what they considered "their" engine. The V990 was the only big four-stroke twin in the Rotax range at this point, and Aprilia considered it effectively a proprietary design - they were the only company using it, and they wanted to keep it that way. They certainly didn't want an upstart competitor to use it - though they wouldn't raise much of a fuss in 2006 when longtime Rotax partner BRP stuffed the same motor into their goofy Can Am Spyder (I suppose Aprilia didn't feel quite so threatened by a Canadian reverse trike aimed at snowmobile riders). It seemed that Fischer had been unfairly strung along by Rotax, who seemed eager to offer their engine for his project and at no point hinted that he might not be allowed to use the V990 in production, but once Aprilia raised their voice Fischer was cut off. The MR1000 was dead before it hit production, but Fischer would soldier on.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Mockup
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Despite losing its Austrian heart, the MR chassis was now a good starting point for further development and an engine transplant. Gemini developed a unique cast alloy frame design for Fischer that they dubbed the Trellispar, with manufacturing input from Caterpillar. At first glance you'd easily think that the broad, flat spars are a conventional, hollow, twin-beam frame. But in fact the frame is a totally unique design that was the first one-piece spar frame ever offered on a production machine. If you look closely at most production frames you'll notice they are composed of several cast or extruded sections that are welded together - the Fischer design eliminates the need for multiple pieces, and adds the bonus of highly controlled rigidity. The subframe was similarly engineered to reduce manufacturing steps. The "trellis" part of the Trellispar moniker refers to the internal structure, which has a Ducati-esque triangulated ribbing cast into the inside of the beams. Fischer claimed that this hybrid structure offered the best of the both worlds - the rigidity and light weight of an alloy spar, with the controlled flex of a steel trellis.
Fischer MRX Motorbike CAD drawing
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For those not well versed in chassis design (which would be most of us) flex is both your enemy and your friend when designing a proper frame. Flex is an inherent element of motorcycle dynamics - all materials are pliable to a degree and the significant suspension and braking forces acting on the frame, swingarm and suspension components will twist and shift the elements to a degree that would surprise most riders. If you've ever watched a real-time computer simulation of suspension and braking forces acting on a motorcycle (or bicycle) frame you will see what I mean - there can be visible deflection of several millimeters in the high-stress areas around the steering head and swingarm pivot.

If you are from an automotive background your immediate reaction would probably be to eliminate flex completely with ever-stiffer frames and more rigid suspensions. In the early days of high-horsepower motorcycle racing (from the 1970s onward) this thinking was applied to bikes as well. Ever-increasing power was quickly overwhelming existing chassis and tire technology and significant increases in control were needed to put the power down without twisting the frame into an ill-handling mess that would sooner spit the rider into the Armco than put him on the podium. A loose chassis feels vague: depending on the severity, it can either seem like you are floating over the asphalt without any feel for what the wheels are doing, or the bike can end up acting like it is hinged in the middle with both ends doing different things (with equally unpredictable results when you start pushing it). Start feeding massive amounts of explosive power into a wobbly chassis and you end up with a bucking, sliding, uncontrollable brute. The first step in coping with this lack of rigidity was to decrease deflection and beef up the suspension components.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Glynn Kerr
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But bikes aren't like cars, and too little flex can be as much of a problem as too much.

While too much flex can cause wayward handling and unpredictable response, too little can make the bike feel too "tight". Traction is an on-off proposition, and the limits can be vicious and difficult to modulate. Properly tuned flex also compensates for the natural tendency of the wheels and suspension to deflect and oscillate, allowing for better roadholding under extreme conditions (i.e. racing) - front end "chatter" being one of the most notable symptoms that teams are constantly trying to control. Under high compression and extreme lean angles, the flex of the frame acts as a rudimentary suspension. Lateral flex is best for this, but needs to be balanced out by a stiff vertical plane, otherwise you just end up back at square one with a flobbery chassis. Now more teams are playing with the mounting of the forks and swingarms to further control lateral movement.

Early experiments in ever-stiffer chassis design was through trial and error, and there are lots apocryphal stories of racers miraculously turning in much quicker lap times, only to discover in the pits that the mechanics forgot to tighten the engine mounting bolts. Even today tuning flex is a tricky business - racing teams and manufacturers alike have been chasing the perfect combination for years, sometimes even going "backwards" and introducing more flex in key areas than previous models such as Yamaha did with its R1 in 2009. There is an element of witchcraft and subjective tuning involved, with each rider having their own preferences.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Rear
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The Fischer attempted to build that ideal balance of rigidity and flexibility to offer exceptional handling, and by most accounts they succeeded in building an excellent chassis. This is all well and good, but without a motor to power it the MR was simply going to be a well-engineered paperweight.
Hyosung GT650 Motorbike
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The solution came from an unlikely source. Hyosung, the South Korean manufacturer of small-displacement motorcycles and scooters, released their first full-sized machine onto the market in 2004 in the form of the Comet and GT650 models. Much ado was made about how this newcomer appeared to be warmed-over first-generation Suzuki SV650 with a steel frame. Rumours spread that Hyosung was an assembler, or maybe a production facility, for outsourced Suzuki components. Others claimed that Hyosung had poached one, or maybe it was several, of the designers who worked on the SV650 (which sounds a bit off because the 650 was an overbored home-market 400cc V-twin and wasn't designed from a clean sheet). Whatever the case the similarities between the Suzuki and the Korean newcomer were notable. Both were modern 90 degree 650-ish cc V-twins with chain driven dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder. Both had liquid cooling, six speed transmissions, and their horsepower figures were very close (Hyosung claimed more horsepower than Suzuki did, but dyno tests proved the Suzuki was usually up around 5 hp at the wheel). The Hyosung was fed by a pair of 39mm Mikuni CV carburettors, like the first generation SV.
Hyosung 650 Engine Motor
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However, contrary to popular myth, the Hyosung engine is not an exact copy or a rebadged SV engine. The bore and stroke are different, as is the displacement - the Hyosung is 647cc via 81.5 x 62mm while the Suzuki is 645cc 81 x 62.6mm. It is a totally different design and shares no parts. Having ridden both I can say there is no contest between the motors in stock guise - the Suzuki engine is a smooth, free-revving twin that feels more powerful than it is, while the Hyosung feels coarse, has so-so fueling, more vibration, and doesn't like getting too close to redline. It is good, but it isn't as good as the benchmark SV. Overall Hyosungs are roughly finished - which is saying a lot, because Suzuki usually trails behind the other Japanese brands when it comes to parts quality. That being said, it is a pleasant motor in its own right and maintains a usable spread of power that belies its modest displacement, very much like the SV.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle
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Fischer saw the Hyosung engine as a cost-effective alternative to the usual suspects, and Hyosung proved to be a willing partner in his venture. Hyosung could provide a ready-made, reliable, pleasant engine to the company which they could install into their top-tier frame. Any other bits and pieces they needed could also be poached from the Korean donor, bringing overall costs down and reducing the retail price. Suddenly the world-beating superbike became a budget-conscious supersport, and Fischer changed the marketing to suit the new direction. This was still to be an American-made (or at least American-assembled) machine, but now it would go toe-to-toe with the Asian manufacturers in the highly competitive middleweight sport/standard category. It would be "The Affordable Exotic". The company would emphasize the quality of the Fischer's components and development, with a price that was comparable to the mass-produced options but offering better value for money. The MR1000 was now the MRX 650.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Cockpit
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The MRX would fill that elusive niche of the small-displacement, twin-cylinder sport bike. It would be a classic "enthusiasts' special" - much like the fabled supermono sportbike, the lightweight sub-500cc four-cylinder supersport, the retro re-pop with modern performance, and the touring bike that is as nimble as a superbike. The automotive equivalent would be the high-performance, manual transmission station wagon demanded by all and bought by precisely no one. There have been many of these fan-specials over the years - the Yamaha SRX600 and FZR400, the Honda Hawk and CB-1, and many other machines that gave the fans exactly what they said they wanted but wouldn't actually buy. See also: anything referred to as a "cult" favourite. The Ducati Sportclassic is an excellent example from recent years: Ducati listened to its fans, built a cool machine that was arguably better than all its contemporaries, which then stagnated on the showroom floor until the line was killed off - only to have a huge resurgence on the secondary market, years after they were discontinued. Rumour has it the current Ducati Streetfighter will face a similar fate, after it was introduced to satisfy the fans who had been clamoring for a naked Superbike for years... "Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose."
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Factory
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The inexpensive supersport twin is another such category, where once again those "enthusiasts" have been calling for a Suzuki SV-esque sport bike with a proper suspension and brakes. The MRX looked like it would fill this gap nicely and give the fans what they wanted - always an ominous sign if you know anything about the fickle peculiarities of the motorcycle market.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Production
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The Hyosung engine was left more or less unchanged but benefited from a functional ram-air intake (with a gaping maw set between the projector beam headlamps) and a complete exhaust system produced by Micron. Peak horsepower was claimed to be around 80hp with ram air, which is the same figure Hyosung was claiming for its stock GT650s, though the Hyosung figure usually proved to be very optimistic in real world testing. A supercharged prototype was built as a test bed for a possible future forced-induction model, the idea being that the supercharged model would be the flagship machine built in lieu of a bigger displacement model.
Fischer MRX Motorcycle Prototype
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Production was set up at a facility in Pocomoke, Maryland. The first MRX prototype was shown with Ohlins forks and shock, and Brembo radial brakes, but the production version would drop the fancy brakes and front end for more modest equipment. The front forks were 43mm upside-down Daesung items taken from the Hyosung GT650R, adjustable for preload, compression and rebound. Fischer claimed some internal changes were made to the Korean forks to improve control. The brake discs, wheels and calipers were straight off the Comet, but upgraded with Goodridge stainless steel brake lines and a Brembo front master cylinder. Brembo front calipers were optional, and apparently became standard on later versions. The claimed dry weight was 399 lbs. The production MRX did, however, retain the Ohlins rear shock, which became a key marketing element for the Fischer and one of the most noteworthy elements of the bike - the highly developed American frame and swingarm were, unfortunately, overlooked by most people who preferred to drool over the fancy Swedish shock. While most people were surprised to find Ohlins bits on a sub-10k machine, it should be noted that Ohlins makes a large series of shocks that range from average OEM-spec coilovers with basic adjustments for a few hundred dollars all the way up to fully-adjustable World Superbike spec widgets that costs more than the average used car. Guess which one of the two the MRX had.
Fischer MRX650 Prototype
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Glynn Kerr's design was modern, angular and attractive. There was a strong resemblance to the Triumph Daytona 650 in the overall design, but with a sleeker profile. The overall machine looked quite polished for a small production machine, and never had the appearance of being some home-brewed special. The "tank" was a plastic fuel cell flanked by painted panels - the company noted that an optional clear plastic cell would be offered, though it's uncertain if it ever reached production. The MRX was a solo-seat machine, with the exhaust jutting up at an angle through the tailsection. The seat looked downright comfy for a sport machine, with a wide and flat pad trimmed in leather. The ergonomics were notable for being not-unbearably contorted, with clip-ons set above the triple (it's the 1980s all over again!), a reasonable seat height, and the same handy adjustable footpegs you'd find on the Hyosung Comet.
Fischer MRX650 Production
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While early reports estimated a retail around $10,000 USD the Fischer MRX was going sell for $7999, Ohlins shock and all. For comparison the class-leading Suzuki SV650 sold for $6499 in half-faired S guise (an ABS model was another 500$) while the Kawasaki Ninja 650R was $6399, and neither had adjustable suspensions. The Hyosung GT650 ranged between $5499 and $6599. A mandatory $399 shipping fee would be tacked onto the price of the MRX - fair considering there were no official dealers at the time, and most shops would charge that much for PDI anyway. All orders would be fielded by Fischer, who would sell the machines directly to the public until a dealer network could be established.
Alan Cathcart Fischer MRX650
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By 2006 close-to-production prototypes were fielded to the press, with Alan Cathcart writing a notable cover-story review published in the December 2006 issue of Motorcyclist that praised the new machine. Not that Cathcart has ever written a scathing review - like Peter Egan, he never seems to encounter a machine he dislikes, just some that are better than others. Cathcart noted a few minor flaws but overall came away impressed with the performance and quality of the upstart brand, with a few phrases thrown in to bolster the Made in America image. Surprisingly none of the usual Hyosung flaws were noted in the engine - Cathcart and other reviewers praised the smoothness of the engine and the quality of the shifting, which was odd considering that the engine was internally unchanged from the GT650. Might there have been a placebo effect, or an unwillingness to critique the home-grown underdog? Perhaps those reviews of the Hyosung had been harsher than necessary... Dan Fischer himself claimed that his alloy frame design was instrumental in quelling the harsh feeling and vibration of the motor.
Fischer MRX Motorbike
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At the end of 2006 Fischer had apparently delivered approximately 20 machines to early supporters who had placed deposits, but full-scale production was still a way off. Only 50 machines were projected for 2007, with steadily increasing production following in subsequent years up to over a thousand machines a year once manufacturing, distribution, and the dealer network were properly sorted out. An upgraded R models was offered, as was a series of a la carte options where you could upgrade your MRX at the factory with a host of trick (and expensive) parts. You could easily option out the MRX to nearly $20,000, which defeated the whole "bargain" aspect of the bike but offered the possibility of tailoring the machine to your desires right off the factory floor.
Fischer MRX Motorbike Top
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Then 2008 happened. Boutique brands the world over struggled and collapsed. No dealer network was forthcoming so the company relied on direct orders. Development was limited and the machine was left more or less unchanged, while the idea of supercharging the 650 twin was dropped, as were plans for a bigger displacement model. Curiously, despite claiming to have delivered 20 machines in 2006 and building at least 50 in 2007, Fischer MRX number 1 was delivered to a customer in Minnesota in 2009. In 2010 a revised model called the MRX650L was announced, but was essentially just a standard MRX with a lowered seat. In the meantime marketing was stagnant aside from the odd press release, and the website continued to look horribly out of date. While the product had promise and some solid engineering behind it, the company's attempt at selling the MRX was terrible. The brand quickly faded into obscurity, apparently making a few deliveries here and there as evidenced by the photos of proud owners with their new machines on the company website and Facebook page. Dan Fischer made a comment on a popular motorcycle blog in 2010 noting that the company was producing bikes, but on a made-to-order basis that was "a bit less than the demand, hence no need to turn on the marketing machine as of yet". He also let slip that they had only produced "a few dozen units" by that point.

After the initial enthusiasm wore off, the usual "enthusiast" (them again) criticisms started popping up on the forums and comment threads. Most people were put off by the use of a Hyosung engine, which has never had a great reputation, and many questioned the use of carburettors on a modern machine - especially considering the Hyosung Comet had switched to fuel injection by this point. Sport riders scoffed at the notion of an 80hp supersport and wondered aloud what happened to the promise of a supercharged version. A recurring comment was that it would make more sense to buy a SV650 and use the leftover cash to throw some upgrades at it... When being a higher-spec alternative to the SV is precisely what the MRX was supposed to be. This speaks volumes about how difficult it is to crack the middleweight market with a brand new machine, no matter how appealing and fairly priced it may have been. On the rare occasions that people were able to see and ride the Fischer, most noted that the quality of the components left a lot to be desired, particularly the parts that were poached from the Comet. Few seemed to buy the whole patriotic angle, particularly with the quantity of South Korean parts that were bolted to the MRX.
Fischer MRX Brochure
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On the plus side, nobody really complained about the price or the level of standard equipment, and those who actually rode them noted that the handling was great and the motor usable in everyday riding, if not eyeball-flattening-ly powerful. Skepticism is a powerful hurdle when it comes to selling motorcycles - even if the product is solid and competitive, motorcyclists can be a fickle and highly entrenched lot who are unlikely to jump into an unproven brand. Everyone wants to be an individual, just like everyone else. It brings to mind SE Hinton's words from Rumblefish, which was a favourite quote of former Iron Horse editor David Snow: "Nothing in his life had surprised him so much as the fact that there were people who rode motorcycles in packs."

By 2012 a small notice was posted on the company website's front page: "The MRX is sold out and no longer in production. Stay tuned for something new". No further details were given. A message sent to the company inquiring about the current status of the brand remains unanswered. If you visit the Fischer main site, you will be greeted by a series of ventures under the Fischer umbrella in addition to the MRX, including an iPhone case with integrated headphones, a "coming soon" ad for "coffee hutch", and a discount copier supply chain. It seems that for all intents and purposes the Fischer motorcycle is dead, just an old project in the portfolio of "The Fischer Companies".
Fischer MRX650 Motorcycle
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Dan Fischer attempted to build an all-American superbike, and ended up building a curious supersport that answered the calls of enthusiasts who desired a light, nimble, high-spec sport bike with a friendly motor. Unfortunately for Fischer what the riders claim to desire and what people will actually buy are two very different things, and the MRX 650 struggled against significant competition, general skepticism, poor marketing, and a prevailing attitude of apathy towards a machine powered by a South Korean engine. The MRX was a valiant attempt to bring a modern and capable motorcycle manufacturer online in the USA, but ultimately proved that the market doesn't always favour the underdog.
Fischer MRX650 Motorcycle
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Interesting Links:
Fischer Motorcycles Website
Fischer Facebook page
Fischer on Twitter
Interview with Dan Fischer on One Wheel Drive
Glynn Kerr's design portfolio showcasing the Fischer prototypes
Glynn Kerr's personal website
MRX650L on The Kneeslider
Early announcement of the MR1000 project on Powersports Network
Motorweek review of the MRX
Trackday Mag intro to the Fischer
Brief summary of chassis flex in Moto GP

Editorial - Thoughts on the Cult of Persecution

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Time for a break from legitimate motorcycle journalism to showcase another rambling, raving editorial from OddBike's benevolent dictator and sole contributor, Jason Cormier.

Being a dedicated long-term motorcyclist ingrains in individuals a certain mindset that is particular to our sport. In joining a tight-knit fraternity of like-minded people who share a common passion, odds are you will start to develop a strong sense of belonging and will become defensive of your hobby. But few hobbies have as confrontational an attitude as motorcycling. Therein lies the peculiarity of being a “true” rider – you will find that you are constantly defending yourself against an onslaught of dangers, detractors, authority figures, and general disdain for your enthusiasm. This brings with it an attitude that I can only describe as a “Cult of Persecution” whereby your very participation in the sport forces you to develop a strong us-vs-them mentality.



Being a motorcycle rider in itself is a process of exposing oneself to danger. It’s not, as the average person would think, due to the nature of straddling an obscenely fast machine that is powered by a series of barely-contained explosions with nothing to protect you from harm aside from what you are wearing, though that does play a factor. No, the real danger in riding lies in the very real threat posed by other people. A good education in how to ride a motorcycle usually begins with “here’s how you control the bike, here are the rules of the road, and by the way, everyone else on the road is a colossal idiot who is driving with the express intent of killing you dead”. The best piece of advice I was ever given as a beginning rider, aside from “look where you want to go”, was “ride like everyone is trying to kill you”. It’s an unfortunate fact but the majority of accidents are due to interactions with other people on the road (see page 4 for a good summary).

The Road is a dangerous place to be a rider. We must contend with the constant presence of these moving hazards in addition to the usual considerations of weather, road surface, obstacles, doddering pedestrians, schizophrenic wildlife, self-entitled bicyclists, and anything else that might conspire to ruin your day. You have to contend with distracted drivers piloting massive boxes of steel and glass who simply “didn’t see you” when they abruptly cut in front of you, across two lanes of traffic, without turn signals, and without any sense of spatial awareness. As such a long-term rider who has survived any time on public roads is going to develop a keen insight into how astonishingly dumb and dangerous other drivers are, which will inform his or her level of perception while riding. You must constantly assume that the drivers around you will do the most irresponsible, negligent and idiotic maneuver possible – then when they (inevitably) perform this action, you will be prepared to react and you won’t be caught off guard. This constant heightened level of awareness, and the regular close calls experienced by every rider, is probably the single most important determination of this attitude of persecution that we riders nurture. We say everyone is out to kill us in jest, but after a few years on the road you'll swear it is the honest-to-God truth.

The other determinate is the consistently ignorant and ill-informed opinions you are bound to encounter spouted off by any halfwit who decides that motorcycles are bad and you should feel bad for riding them. We all know these dolts, and we all lose a considerable amount of respect for them as soon as they open their maws and vomits out the terms “dangerous”, “scary”, or that cliché that grates to no end: “donorcycles”. Yes, we all know “that guy” or “that gal” who has thrown the ol' DC at us, with that smug expression on their face as if they were so incredibly clever to have come up with such a brilliant contraction. Because I haven’t heard that damnable term from every white-bread nitwit who is too scared to throw a leg over. Worse still, in my opinion, are the fallen riders - those former motorcyclists who have turned vehement enemies of the sport because they got scared off by some unfortunate circumstances. They are often the first ones to pull the out the dreaded "I knew someone who was killed on a bike" card, which is one of the most insulting and insensitive comments you can throw at a motorcyclist.

If I have been riding bikes for many years, and I too have known many people who have been killed on bikes, and have had my own share of close encounters with the far side of death, you can be goddamned sure I’m well aware of any real or imagined “danger” and I chose to ride anyway because nothing else in my life makes me as happy as a perfect day on the back of a motorcycle. I'd rather take my chances and live, instead of resigning myself to an impossibly dull Suburbanite life with nothing to look forward to except playing golf every Sunday morning with a bunch of old dead-on-the-inside WASP men. Frank Drebin summarized it quite nicely: "You take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the street, or sticking your face in a fan."

Time to digress. With all that being said, you can argue with these people until you pass out – they will never understand that the danger isn’t inherent, it is introduced in large part by absent-minded jerks like themselves, and the negative perceptions they propagate does nothing to advance our sport. They had long-ago convinced themselves that you are stupid for being so irresponsible as to enjoy yourself on a motorbike, and they will proselytize the error of your ways because they somehow feel smarter than you for recognizing the risks involved. This whole attitude against bikes speaks to a certain anthropomorphizing of the machine, whereby these naysayers fail to acknowledge that there is a person on these “donorcycles”, a person who extracts great enjoyment from the act of riding. To these detractors the machine and man are one, but not in the positive sense – it is a result of ignorance and a lack of respect that they view motorcycles as machinations that are threatening and dangerous in themselves, their inherent nature being unrelated and completely divorced from the pilots perched atop them or the circumstances surrounding them. Simply put without the flowery language – they fucking forgot that there are actual people riding these motorcycles.

So you have the actual dangers introduced by others and the constant parroting of the perceived dangers from everyone else. Those two factors alone would be enough to introduce an inferiority complex in the best of us. But there’s more. So much more.

The very act of riding a motorcycle inspires visions of outlaws and neo-wild-west fantasies of lawless escape on both sides of the continuum. Many motorcyclists flaunt the law and cultivate an image of badassitude, be it the patch-addled biker gang reject or the leather-clad wheelie-popping Power Ranger racer-wannabe. Lately we’ve had a resurgence in the Rocker image, with many a perfectly-groomed young punk astride his/her carefully modified classic machine outside the local espresso bar – you might call them café-racers, I’d call them hipsters who graduated from fixies. I’ll leave motocrossers out of our catalogue of stereotypes because they operate outside the public eye on closed courses and backwood trails, the lucky buggers. The ignorant public makes no attempt to look past these carefully constructed images and immediately labels anyone on two wheels an obnoxious, antisocial menace, further reinforcing the old tropes. To them we are nothing more than noisy, negligent, speed-crazed hooligans.The façade effectively becomes the reality. And then one side informs the other, and the cycle continues. And all the while you are creating a further division between the rider and the “other”.

Our predilection for modifying and tinkering with our rides tends to aggravate things. We are not ones to leave well enough alone. I can't recall the last time I encountered a bone-stock motorcycle. The obvious (and most illegal) changes are exhausts and fueling to improve sound and performance, which puts us at odds with every noise and emissions law this side of California. We love the hearty sound of an uncorked motor, and the precise throttle response of proper carburetion. A little extra performance is always welcome as well. Yes, we read those "for off road use only" tags and ignored them, even if we tell Mr. Officer we had no idea these pipes were illegal. We adjust fuel metering to make the bikes respond properly and run smoothly, something that is often lacking in lean-as-dammit-to-abide-by-the-EPA stock tuning. We make changes to the point where we no longer recognize the laws we are breaking, we just take it for granted and expect to be given a free pass because there is no way we wouldn't change this items. And then get sore when we are taken to task for our violations and fight back as if we were in the right all along. It becomes the classic outlaw mentality, where we no longer recognize the nature of  our deeds and take offense to anyone who tries to serve us punishment - only now we get mad because we were issued a fix-it ticket, not because we were caught robbing the Union Pacific No. 3.      

Insurance companies, government bureaucracies, and law enforcement further ingrain our sense of alienation. Depending on your locale, you might face obscenely high insurance and/or insurance rates for being so bold as to chose a motorcycle as your mode of conveyance. Speaking from personal experience, in my province of Quebec we have faced significant opposition over the last 10 years in the form of astronomical increases in registration costs. I currently pay $1100 per year (taxes included) to register my bike. Register. A license plate and a slip of paper, and a vague statement about how my choice of "high-risk" motorcycle is too expensive to insure under our no-fault insurance system in spite of my 10 years riding experience and a flawless driving record. I still pay my actual vehicle insurance on top of that fee. The cost of registration peaked at $1400 a year and were scheduled to go over $1800, but those kind souls at the SAAQ (our dimwitted equivalent of the DMV) were so generous as to reduce our rates to $1100, only slightly up from the the $320 we paid before 2008. I just rolled my eyes so hard I think I may have detached my retinas.

To add insult to injury we are charged an additional annual fee on our license renewal to retain our motorcycle endorsement, and every time I call or visit a SAAQ outlet they ask me if I want to keep renewing my motorcycle class as if it were some blight on my record that I should erase. And so it is that we here are made to feel like second-class citizens, guilty of enjoying a passion that was seen as an easy target to milk for funds. Lately we've been targeted en-masse for loud exhausts, not to mention the usual speed traps, with widespread harassment and hefty fines becoming the norm for riders in this province. It all contributes to a general sense of malaise and disrespect that has given our province a bad name among motorcyclists all over the country. Aside from destroying the local motorcycle industry and putting a serious damper on bike sales, it has turned off a lot of would-be two-wheeled tourists who would rather not encounter our notoriously overzealous law enforcement.

Sometimes the sense of persecution can be indirect as well. Recently there have been some slapshod repairs done to some local riding backroads in the form of tarsnakes. Tarsnakes are a threat to riders in general, being enough to upset traction in a turn, but these are a particularly sinister type of 'snake that are the most diabolical thing I've ever encountered on a public road. They are some sort of new formulation that is horrifically slippery - black-ice slippery. Forget diesel spills and gravel - these are sudden-death overtime game enders. Riding over them is terrifying, the bike simply skates and shimmies across the surface - and that is at speeds well below the limit. There have been several serious accidents along one popular stretch of road where these menaces were applied. My immediate reaction upon encountering this stretch of road was that some pencil-necked bureaucrat had approved a new supplier for the material that would save the government a few pennies per year, only to inadvertently endanger thousands of motorcyclists across the province. I felt personally affronted - someone had made a casual, uninformed decision that might result in my death or injury. A few half-hearted conspiracy theories were concocted that the locals were trying to drive us off their road with shoddy repairs (my personal theory of them driving their cars up and down the route at 10 under the posted limit without giving way is continually proven by subjective testing, however). It's clearly a case of inadequate testing, or poor application of the repair, but our immediate reaction as riders tends towards "they are out to get us!". 

The attitude of riders in these situations can sometimes be quite surprising to people outside the motorcycle community. After years of harassment we tend to become indignant at any suggestion of wrongdoing, no matter how wrong our doing may be. We snap like cornered animals whenever someone denounces us - no room for polite discussion. With our recent rash of loud-pipe tickets issued as part of the Quebec crackdown on noisy bikes (motorcycles are specifically and explicitly targeted) the prevailing attitude has been to fight back and take the citations to court. While I'm not one to advocate laying down and accepting the bullying of an authority at the expense of your rights, let's not kid ourselves - if you break the law, expect to get caught and prepare to pay for the infraction. If your pipes aren't legal and you get a ticket, you shouldn't be surprised. If you speed and get pulled over, you shouldn't be blaming the cops. If you get caught pulling wheelies... You get the idea. We are not any more above the law than those pompous dolts on bicycles who ignore every traffic signal and then moan loudly on the local news about the injustice of getting ticketed for blowing through a red light. Except we aren't as likely to get the media airtime to make ourselves look like self-entitled morons.

This sort of opposition to anything and everything that impinges on our riding can create odd situations, like we are seeing in many US states where there is vocal opposition to mandatory helmet laws. I think anyone with half a brain can agree that crashing without a helmet means you are going to have a bad time. A helmet can and will save your life, I would hope everyone is willing to admit. The point of fighting mandatory helmet laws is not because of any objection to the helmet itself so much as it is to fight the removal of one more element of personal freedom. Riders who object to helmet laws do so to protect their right to chose for themselves, even if that choice is one of self-endangerment. Soon the actual law becomes secondary to the cause it represents and much rhetoric and misinformation gets bandied about on both sides, and pretty soon a nice little quagmire has developed where riders are in the news claiming that helmets somehow don't contribute to safety. Then you end up with surreal developments like the AMA standing against helmet laws and making motorcyclists in general look dumb. And then when the laws are finally repealed, the motorcycle injury rates promptly spike. We fight to the extreme and end up going backwards, all the while alienating ourselves from the public.

I try to maintain a certain balance in my attitude towards "outsiders". I defend my interests and my love of the sport. I will never let anyone get away with dismissing my community with ignorant rhetoric. I maintain a healthy skepticism of the machinations of authority and their supposed benevolence to us tax-paying motorists (fool me once, shame on you; fool me 3,586 times, what the fuck am I still doing here?). But despite this I remain a civil and agreeable member of my community. I wish to present a strong but friendly image to non-riders, one of a man who is passionate and will defend his interests vehemently but without aggression or unreasonable demands. I think this is the best approach for the community in general - throw off the bad-boy image and replace it with a cool, collected and intelligent disposition that shows confidence without obnoxious bravado. Show that we are people who enjoy what we do, and that we won't take your bullshit sitting down. Civil action and public discourse is required - if we stand in the corner and complain amongst ourselves, further alienating our group from the public, we won't get our issues noticed and we certainly won't get anything changed in our favour. Our position in society is a precarious one at times, and we are impinged upon from all sides. The cult of persecution is real and entirely justified, but it should be an impetus to act and improve our station, not to back ourselves into a corner and lash out at our attackers.

OddBike USA Tour - Help Fund OddBike on Indiegogo

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Contribute to the Campaign here: OddBike USA Tour on Indiegogo


OddBike's USA Tour

My name is Jason Cormier, and I am the Editor of Odd-Bike.com, an independent website that specializes in the profiling of rare and unusual motorcycles.

I've long been a passionate motorcycle rider freelance writer, and OddBike is the culmination of my passions and skills as well as an archive of some of the rarest, most unusual and fascinating two-wheeled machines that have ever put rubber to pavement. As I am a historian by education and a mechanic by hobby, I pride myself in writing detailed profiles that detail the historical context, cultural impact, and technical information of these interesting motorcycles.

I maintain OddBike in my spare time as a non-profit website that is free of sponsorship or advertising. I believe this allows me to write without hindrance and without anyone to answer to, and my articles reflect this freedom. However for certain (more ambitious) projects I require funding from you, my readers and supporters.

This campaign is, at its basis, to fund my journey by motorcycle this October 2013 from my home in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to visit several key locations in the Southern United States, for the purpose of collecting information, interviews and photographs to use in at least three upcoming OddBike features. These features will include:

- A visit to the Motus Motorcycles factory in Birmingham, Alabama.
- A stop at the Barber Motorsports Museum in Birmingham to cover the 9th annual Barber Vintage Festival.
- A visit to Bienville Studios in New Orleans, Louisiana to interview motorcycle designer JT Nesbitt about his upcoming Bienville Legacy project.

This journey will be undertaken in mid-October 2013 and will take approximately two weeks, round trip. I will be using my personal 1997 Ducati 916 to perform the journey. It may not be the most appropriate touring rig, but it has served me well over the years and I wouldn't do it on anything else.

I will maintain a travelogue of the journey on the OddBike Facebook page, with the intent of eventually writing a detailed ride report.

This journey is more than a simple trip across the USA, it's an opportunity for OddBike to grow by showcasing several unique independent motorcycle projects that have been under-represented in the traditional motorcycle media. I aim to correct that with my own blend of intelligent technical analysis and insight into motorcycle history and design. And I feel the best way to do this is to meet with the individuals in person and examine their projects first-hand.

What I Need

To complete this tour I require funding for the following expenses:

- Gas
- Food
- Accommodations
- Some basic touring gear and maintenance to prepare the 916 for the journey

It really is that simple. I am only seeking the funding I need to complete this trip, which will be a round trip of approximately 5000kms over a period of two weeks.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't contribute monetarily, I would greatly appreciate if you shared my campaign and OddBike via social media, and of course I encourage you to read my writing and contribute your opinions on Facebook and the OddBike website.


Contribute to the Campaign here: OddBike USA Tour on Indiegogo

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