Motorcycles
NCR's M16 MotoGP streetfighter: the most exclusive motorcycle on the planet?
Overkill. The word's origins are military in nature, describing a situation where one country has enough nuclear weapons to destroy significantly more of another nation that it would ever need to in order to win a war. But the term applies perfectly to today's sportsbike market, where any numpty with a license and a check book can waltz into a dealership and wobble out on a thoroughbred race machine that can break the speed limit at mid-revs in first gear and accelerate faster than any car on the road. Of course, for some people that's just not enough, bless their souls – but to create a vehicle that stands out from the pack in such a time of plenty, you have to take things to the absolute extreme. And it's a long time since we saw anything quite as extreme as the NCR M16, a bike that takes one of the most expensive roadbikes ever built, throws almost all of it in the bin and replaces it with the most exotic materials on the planet. Gentlemen, start your drooling. Read More
While electric motorbikes are creeping steadily into the marketplace, most of the ones we’ve seen here on Gizmag have been designed either as commuters, racers or for some weekend fun in the dirt. What we haven’t seen so much are electrics made for haulin' – something motorcycles are relied on heavily for in many parts of the world. How did you know I was going to say “until now”? Read More
Be careful if you plan to watch this video at work; the Ducati 1198 is motorcycle lust distilled to its purest form. It packs 170 horsepower, weighs 171 kilograms and has a top speed in excess of 300 km/h – more or less standard figures for a road superbike in these blessed days, but as the king of the V-twins, the 1198 delivers an enormous wall of low-down grunt that its 4-cylinder competitors simply can't match. It's an impossibly gorgeous bike to look at, dripping in exotic sex appeal and high-class performance pedigree... But is it a highly-strung thoroughbred like Aprilia's brutal RSV4, a sportsbike your grandma could ride like Honda's Fireblade, or something in between? From the Ducati WSBK pit garage to the road, Loz Blain and Noel McKeegan roll up the sleeves and put the flagship Ducati through its paces for the latest in our series of HD video motorcycle reviews. Read More
American Michael Czysz has been building two-wheeled masterpieces for many years, though the cruel reality of racing has meant that the distinctly proletarian budgets he has had at his disposal have always been directly compared to the hundreds of millions spent by the likes of Honda, Yamaha, Ducati et al. Widely considered the “man most likely” for almost too long, his electric motorcycle took its first BIG win in the Isle of Man TT Zero race a few hours ago when it blitzed the competition, demonstrating 135 mph top speeds and went within a whisker of the GBP10,000 prize for the first 100 mph lap of the Island circuit. Most significantly, the MotoCzysz team demonstrated the massive performance leap electric bikes have taken over the last 12 months as the second IOM electric race, albeit under a different guise (original creators of electric racing, TTxGP now has several international series running) saw the average winning speed jump more than 10% from 87.434 mph to 96.820 mph. Read More
The "ultimate in road legal quad biking" is how the makers of the Venom Evil describe their creation. If its exclusive designer styling and the splash of shiny chrome on the front crash bars and speedos don't manage to turn heads, then perhaps the water-cooled 250cc engine, twin exhaust and sporty alloy wheels will. Read More
The era of electric motorcycle racing which began at the Isle of Man in June last year has grown into a world series road race for 2010. On May 16th, history was made as TTXGP North America Round 1 took place at the Infineon Raceway in California. It was the first-ever electric superbike race to take place in that continent. Read More
The challenge: to design and build a high speed road-racing motorcycle from scratch, with an eye towards cost-effective production. Could you do it? The folks at Spain’s Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) think that a team of their engineering students can. The team is competing in the Moto Student competition, which pits university teams from around Europe and the rest of the world against each other to see who can design the best commercially-viable bike. Read More
The world's fastest road bike derivatives went to Italy last weekend for the latest round of the World Superbike Championships at Monza, AKA “the Cathedral of Speed.” Monza favors very fast motorcycles and the results echo what we'd already suspected after several rounds of the championship - there appears to be a changing of the guard underway and the addition of BMW and Aprilia to Europe's previously sole superbike contender, Ducati, appears to have tipped the balance of power away from the Japanese marques. A double-win to Aprilia and BMW's first podium in the superbikes were one indicator as was BMW's continuing superstock dominance. In a class that's an excellent guide to the sportiness of showroom road bikes, BMW's S1000 RR blew the competition into the weeds. Read More
Harley Davidson has been dominating flat track racing in America basically since it began. On the faster one mile tracks it is 17 years since any other manufacturer has won a race. So it was an enormous surprise to see the Ducati Hypermotard 1100EVO powered flat-tracker take the marque's first ever Grand National victory in the Yavapai Downs Mile in Arizona last Saturday. Apart from ending an unbroken 17 year winning streak by Harley on one mile tracks, the win marks the first time a readily available production engine has won a Grand National Twins race in 29 years. Read More
