Motorcycles
Kymco’s new 700cc scooter: a technology flagship
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October 25, 2007 Taiwanese manufacturer Kymco is getting ready to stamp some serious presence on the scooter market with a brand new 700cc super-scooter unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show. The Myroad 700i features plenty of neat gadgets such as inbuilt tyre pressure gauges, electronically adjustable suspension, keyless ignition, ABS and an alarm, as well as a 170kmh+ top speed to make it the up-and-coming company’s technology flagship for 2008. Read More
Yamaha's Tesseract four-wheel motorcycle
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October 25, 2007 Yamaha is set to reveal a whole new class of four-wheel recreational machine at the Tokyo Motor Show that looks to combine motorcycle performance and maneuverability with four wheels worth of traction and road-holding capability. Details remain sketchy on the Tesseract hybrid four-wheeled motorcycle – ostensibly a four-wheel version of the Vespa, Piaggio and Vectrix three-wheelers with tilting mechanisms (dubbed “dual-scythe suspension”) at both ends making it a carving four-wheeler that retains the advantages of narrow width roughly equivalent to a two-wheeled machine. Powered by an electric hybrid liquid-cooled V-twin, the Tesseract promises ample torque and a top speed that will be theoretical everywhere but a racetrack, and when at rest, the machine will remain upright without the need for a stand via a dual arm-lock system. Read More
Bio-diesel powered motorcycle eclipses 100mpg
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October 22, 2007 The 2007 Panasonic World Solar Challenge got underway yesterday with 40 teams from across the globe competing in the 3000 km race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia. Among the competitors in the Greenfleet Technology Class - a category for internal combustion vehicles promoting an enhanced environmental profile - is the BioBike, a biodiesel-powered motorcycle, constructed by a group of students in Adelaide, Australia, that happily does 96kmh and returns a staggering fuel economy of only 2.2 litres per 100 kilometres. As the design is further refined, BioBike’s creators expect this to drop below the 2 litres per 100km mark (around 107 miles per gallon), and they believe it can be manufactured for around the same cost as a petrol-powered dirtbike. Read More
Custom-built GEICO Chopper to be auctioned for charity
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October 21, 2007 Built by well-known motorcycle builder Rick “Big Rick” Hoffman, the customized “GEICO Chopper” will be auctioned online for the benefit of children’s charities with bids opening on October 22. Read More
2008 Yamaha YZF-R6 receives widespread “stealth” updates
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Next year’s R6 might not look very different to the current model, but under the sharp-looking bodywork Yamaha’s 600cc Supersport missile has received some significant revisions aimed at improving the bike’s already scalpel-like handling and screaming power. As always, the 600cc Supersport road/track bike category will be extremely hard fought in 2008. With Triumph’s class-smashing 675 Daytona ruling the roost from out of nowhere for the last two years, the Japanese companies are throwing all their knowledge and technology at the category to wrestle back their supremacy. The customer is surely the winner in this battle - next year’s Yamaha YZF-R6 will contain more electronic goodies and tricky technology straight from the racetrack than anything that’s preceded it. Read More
Triumph’s 2.3-litre Rocket III gets re-invented as a tourer
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October 18, 2007 Triumph have finally presented the touring version of their hairy-chested 2.3-litre mega-cruiser that they’ve been promising for over 12 months. The Rocket III Touring was unveiled to dealers last weekend in Atlanta. and rather than simply slapping a screen and a set of panniers on the original machine – which would have made for quite an acceptable touring bike – the British company chose to give it a full work-over. The engine has been “re-tuned for lazy, effortless touring” – which we take to mean it’s been partially relieved of its crazed top-end rush in favor of a torquier power delivery… Not that the tyre-smoking original could have been accused of lacking torque. Final power figures are yet to be released, but we wouldn't expect the Rocket III's 140 horsepower peak to be maintained in the Touring version. Read More
Lazareth’s supercharged Buell XB12S custom
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October 16, 2007 Ludovic Lazareth has impressed us before with his eye-catching and unique customs. Somewhat of a legend in the French motorcycle tuning and custom building scene, Lazareth’s latest has fascinated us on a technical level as much as for its brutal good looks. Read More
Ducati’s Desmosedici RR almost sold out before production begins
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October 12, 2007 Ducati didn’t believe punters would jump at their US$70,000 MotoGP replica motorcycle – how wrong they were. With production still yet to begin, less than 250 units remain to be pre-ordered of what is surely the most extreme production motorcycle on the planet, the Desmosedici RR. If you want one, you’d better move fast. Read More
Honda’s infinitely variable Human-Friendly Transmission for motorcycles
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October 10, 2007 Honda has announced what it is calling a Human-Friendly Transmission (HFT) for motorcycles. The new automatic transmission system uses Honda’s own infinitely variable hydraulic mechanical transmission in a lightweight compact configuration ideal for motorcycles. Easy to operate, the HFT realizes outstanding relaxed riding comfort and feel with direct response and excellent transmission efficiency. The system offers two fully automatic shifting modes - D mode for ordinary riding and S mode for a sporty riding - or a 6-speed manual mode. The HFT will be installed on the DN-01, a new motorcycle scheduled for market launch to be introduced at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show. Read More
2008 MotoGP teams begin to emerge
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October 10, 2007 This year's World Champion Casey Stoner, as well as Rossi, Vermeulen and the Honda team are staying where they are for season 2008 – but beyond that, MotoGP has been a huge game of musical chairs as riders jump from team to team hoping to secure the best bikes for next year. With teams finally settling, here’s what we know. Read More
Aprilia’s upcoming V4 engine to deliver up to 220hp
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October 8, 2007 Aprilia tell us their much-anticipated V4 engine is currently undergoing durability testing in four states of tune – from a huge 185 horsepower up to an eye-watering 220 horsepower. Which one will we see in the road-going superbike they’re building? Read More
Formotion: billet bolt-on timepieces for motorcycles
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October 6, 2007 Tired of working out dodgy ways to attach a clock you can read while you’re riding your motorcycle? Formotion has released a range of great-looking and affordable bolt-on clocks and thermometers to fit to any bike. Read More
KTM unveils radical factory stunt bike
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October 4, 2007 What is it about KTM motorcycles; does the factory fill the front tyre with helium? Many KTM riders treat their front wheels like ornaments, waving them at the sky at every opportunity. KTM must have realized this – and the factory’s clearly decided “why fight it?” Along with a very tasty range of bikes based on the tasty LC4 engine for 2008, they’ve released teaser pics of a dedicated stunt-riding model with some very stunt-specific gear integrated as standard. Read More
2008 Honda Fireblade gets a full makeover
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October 3, 2007 Details have finally been officially released of the Honda Fireblade’s end-to-end 2008 overhaul... and here they are: wet weight drops 6kg to 199kg, power climbs 7hp to just under 180hp. The ‘Blade finally gets a next-gen slipper clutch, as well as a remodelled HESD steering damper. It’s also had a complete style overhaul – not to mention a stubby underslung exhaust. In fact, just about everything except the already-superb suspension has been completely redesigned. Honda’s clearly seeing this model as a big jump forward for the “friendly” superbike, a makeover they’re hoping will be as stunning as the one the GSX-R got in 2005. Read More
BMW Motorrad launches fast, light, DOHC Boxer and intends to go racing
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September 30, 2007 BMW’s iconic boxer engine is set for another lease of life with the launch of the new BMW HP2 Sport - the sportiest, most powerful and lightest Boxer motorcycle of all time. The new motor is the first to sport a double overhead camshaft and includes a host of innovative features including a quickshifter for clutchless gear changes and the news that the factory will enter the World Superbike Championship with the new bike in 2009, indicating that it intends to take on Ducati as a rival on both the road and the track. Read More
2008 Ninja ZX-10R gets traction control
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September 29, 2007 UPDATED - NEW IMAGES Demonstrating the company’s total commitment to uncompromising racetrack focus, Kawasaki has revealed their 2008 ZX-10R flagship superbike will feature traction control as standard. The 08 model is a complete overhaul of the model, featuring a new chassis, updated suspension, a reworked engine and new front-end styling. Read More
Honda unveils six cylinder sports motorcycle prototype
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September 27, 2007 Honda will unveil a series of show motorcycles at this year’s Tokyo Motorcycle Show, headed by a radical six cylinder prototype to be known as the EVO6, which will be based on Honda’s six cylinder Gold Wing engine, but in a form far from its long-distance tourer guise. Seemingly aimed squarely at the Suzuki B-King muscle machine which was unveiled at this show four years ago, the 1832cc engine is much lighter and sportier than its touring brethren and is housed in an ultra-modern lightweight frame and is clearly designed for very rapid acceleration. Read More
First ride: Moto Morini 9½ and Corsaro exotic road bikes
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September 25, 2007 Moto Morini motorcycles have become rarities since the company's heyday in the 1970s, but the brand is enjoying a resurgence - not only is it back under Morini family ownership, but its new range of 1200cc twins are making a strong impression around the world. Loz Blain takes the 9½ streetbike and the Corsaro streetfighter for a back-to-back road test and discovers that even if they share their thunderous 1200cc V-twin engine, these two Italian exotics are as different as Meg Ryan and Naomi Campbell. Read More
KTM RC8 superbike set to launch
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September 21, 2007 With less than two months to go before its debut at the Milan Motorcycle Expo, KTM’s highly anticipated 1150cc RC8 superbike contender is undergoing intensive pre-release road and track testing. Has KTM’s early promise of the world’s most powerful V-twin engine been scuttled by the tyre-shredding Ducati 1098, or do the Austrians have something special up their sleeve? Read More
Vento releases 400cc triple quadbike
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September 20, 2007 Vento have wasted no time in bolting their recently completed 400cc three-cylinder engine into a quadbike for production. The brand-new Reptile 400 will be the first quad designed from the ground up by the American company, and it looks like a good fun sporty middleweight to kick off Vento’s new range for 2008. Read More
Killacycle nearly lives up to its name
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September 17, 2007 We recently covered the record-setting Killacycle electric drag bike, a 350bhp animal of a machine that has been verified at the drag strip as the fastest electric motorcycle ever. The bike’s in need of some TLC now, though, after owner Bill Dube accidentally ploughed it into a parked van while showing off for the video cameras. Thankfully, he wasn’t too badly hurt and the Killacycle will live to drag again. Read More
First ride: the Vectrix Electric Maxi-Scooter
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It’s a special sort of road test when you get to try out not only a brand new bike, but one of the first viable examples of a whole different engine technology. Loz Blain and Noel McKeegan get their hands on the Vectrix Electric Maxi-Scooter, an Italian/American beauty with a 100kph top speed, a 110km commuting range, and a two-way throttle that engages a very handy regenerative braking system. It’s a promising early taste of what’s in store when electric motorcycles hit the market in force. Read More
Triketek X2 Arrow three-wheel twin-seater cruise machine
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September 13, 2007 We’re seeing more and more vehicles coming to market that are completely impractical and purely for fun purposes and three-wheeler trikes fit squarely into this category. Enter the X2 Arrow, currently being shown in Frankfurt, a uniquely styled, low-profile trike that offers a driver and a passenger the wind-in-your-hair freedom and snappy handling of a motorcycle with the roll-cage safety of a sports car. Read More
161mph land-speed record set on a Panhead Harley
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September 12, 2007 Female drag racer Valerie Thompson has her eye on a 200mph top speed on Bonneville’s salt flats. She took a major step toward this lofty goal earlier this week when she took her 120-inch Panhead Harley to a new land-speed record of 161.736mph. The former investment banker ran nitrous oxide and a small fairing to chase the record, and can’t wait until she runs a full streamliner in next year’s all-out assault on 200mph, an unprecedented speed for the class. Read More
New all-American inline triple set to hit the motorcycle market
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September 11, 2007 American motorcycle manufacturer Vento Motorcycles today announced the first engine the company has had designed specifically for its own products. The new three cylinder, 400 cc, 30 horsepower engine, the most powerful inline triple ATV engine ever built, is the first American-made engine to be designed and used by Vento. The company will use the new engine in an expanded range of ATVs and middleweight bikes from 2008 onwards. Read More
Gilera shoe-horns an 840cc engine into its latest scooter
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September 11, 2007 An 840cc, 90-degree fuel injected V-twin, performance chassis, 200kmh top speed and braided brake lines… on a CVT, step-thru scooter? After sending heads spinning with its Nexus 500, a scooter that handles like a sportsbike in the twisties, Gilera have completely dumbfounded us with their GP 800 hyperscooter. Striking some sort of bizarre balance between a super-grunty commuter and a genuine sports-tourer, this bespectacled bad-boy is the new and undisputed king of the scooter segment. Read More
Landmark night Grand Prix to be held in Qatar 2008
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September 4, 2007 Whispers of a night-time MotoGP event first reached Gizmag in early 2006 and now it’s official – the season opening Grand Prix of Qatar on March 9th next year will be held under lights to allow for better synchronization with European television schedules. The staging of the unprecedented night race will involve what is believed to be the biggest lighting project in the world for any sporting event – almost four thousand lights will be used to ensure visibility and remove shadowing from the track. Read More
Christini’s All-Wheel-Drive dirt bikes find huge traction without power loss
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Four Wheel drive cars have taken over at the top-level of off-road rally racing, but dirt bike racing is still predominantly fought out on single-wheel-drive vehicles that spin up, fishtail and slide wildly across rough terrain. Make no mistake though, the All Wheel Drive (AWD) revolution is coming to the motorcycle world – Yamaha and KTM have done significant work with hydraulic front-wheel-drive systems, and when new ideas like this successful all-mechanical AWD kit from Christini hit the mainstream, dirt bike riding will never be the same again. Read More
Confederate's Renovatio – the handmade American streetbike goes modular
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If you thought Confederate’s previous motorcycles, the Wraith and Hellcat, were outrageous to look at, wait ‘til you see the company’s latest project. The virtually frameless Renovatio takes minimalism and modular design to the next level and flags a bold future direction for this iconoclastic New Orleans-based streetbike manufacturer. Read More
Buell 1125R: high performance sportsbike showcases all-new Buell platform
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August 6, 2007 Buell has announced the upcoming release of the 1125R – its first litre-class motorcycle built on an all-new Buell platform including a freshly developed liquid-Cooled V-Twin engine described as the most-powerful street-legal engine ever offered by the company. Just about every aspect of the bike has been changed from previous models – new chassis, fairing, front-brake, muffler, clutch… and on it goes, but the biggest news is the 1125cc DOHC V-Twin Helicon power plant developed in a collaboration between Buell and BRP-Rotax that aims to combine superbike power with the smooth torque characteristics of a V-Twin. The engine redlines at 10500 rpm, produces its 146 crankshaft horsepower at 9800 rpm and 82ft/lbs of peak torque at 8000 rpm. The Buell 1125R is expected to arrive in Buell dealerships in at the end of 2007. Read More
Piaggio ready to release 170 mpg hybrid two and three wheel scooters
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Italian manufacturer Piaggio, the maker of Vespa, is set to become the first company to release a hybrid drive scooter following an announcement that it is developing hybrid versions of its Vespa LX, Piaggio X8 and Vespa MP3 (the carving three-wheeler) models. The new hybrid system, which has a working title of HyS (Hybrid Scooter), can operate in full electric mode with a range of around 20 kilometres as well as hybrid mode - whenever the rider needs to accelerate more aggressively, the electric motor kicks in, providing about 85 per cent extra performance. Piaggio’s HyS system is a parallel hybrid in which a combustion engine and an electric motor incorporated into the gearbox casing are mechanically and electronically linked and simultaneously supply power to the rear wheel. The system uses drive-by-wire and the in-built electronic management combines the two engines to offer not only better acceleration but also a significant reduction in fuel consumption (up to 170 mpg or 1.67 liters/100 km) and in CO2 emissions, only 40 g/km (using 65% the hybrid modes and 35% the electric one). Perhaps the most exciting prospect is the hybrid MP3 which enjoyed such success as a 250cc it has since been developed as a 400cc version and was recently shown as a stylish 500cc Gilera – a sportier hybrid version of the 500 would enjoy exceptional performance. Read More
High-tech motorcycle training system puts learner skills under the microscope
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August 1, 2007 Those who choose to ride motorcycles, including many of us in the Gizmag team, choose to accept a higher level of risk in our daily transport than a car driver. We mitigate this risk through higher levels of attention, roadcraft and dedicated development of riding skills than are typically displayed by drivers – and rider licensing and advanced training courses are a critical part of most riders’ development as safe, confident road users. Still, rider training and testing typically focuses on fairly nebulous goals and results that give the rider very little concrete feedback on their progress or areas of weakness, so Australia’s DVExperts have come up with a device that brings a new level of hard science to the process. Their Motorcycle Operator Training Assessor (MOTA) unit is a set of sensors the size of a deck of cards that can be attached to a bike to record reaction times, acceleration, braking forces, swerving forces and lean angles to provide a very clear readout of a student’s performance in each testing or training exercise along with their levels of improvement after a day’s training. This means license testing can be brought to a new level of consistency and accountability and we suspect the MOTA’s also going to be a fun piece of equipment for the trainers themselves to play with after hours. Read More
All new Aussie Yamaha motorcycles to come with free DataDot theft protection
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July 31, 2007 Motorcycles offer a boundless sense of freedom to their owners – and they’re also seen as boundlessly free by bike thieves who know it only takes two men to lift a parked bike into a van and nick-off with it. But a bike that can always be traced back to its original owner is difficult for thieves to make a dollar from and Yamaha is taking advantage of this fact on behalf of its customers. Since February this year, every new Yamaha motorcycle, scooter and ATV sold in Australia has been sprayed with DataDotDNA theft protection – microscopic dots that carry identifying information linking every part on the bike back to its original frame number and making stolen bikes extremely difficult to on-sell or part out. DataDotDNA are doing these sorts of deals across the world with a number of different manufacturers now, and becoming a worldwide standard in vehicle identification. Read More
2008 Suzuki Hayabusa to be world's fastest production motorcycle
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July 14, 2007 The world’s fastest production motorcycle mantle is about to change hands again, returning to Suzuki due to the 2008 Hayabusa’s just announced specifications which should see it push past Kawasaki's ZX-14. The new 1340cc motor is 41cc bigger, and the three-ring, aluminum alloy forged slipper pistons have a compression ratio of 12.5:1, an increase over the current Hayabusa’s11.5:1 and is expected to deliver 12 percent more power, giving the Busa a rear wheel output of 175 to 180 bhp. The motor comes in two different bikes – the speed king Hayabusa and the hyper muscular B-King. Read More
BMW Motorrad’s exclusive high performance HP2 Megamoto
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July 14, 2007 One of the more interesting new motorcycles of recent times is BMW’s HP2 Megamoto which will be arriving in Motorrad showrooms in July. As motard motorcycles have grown in importance and market share, some manufacturers such as Ducati, have developed 1000cc plus uber motards, and now here comes the the most uncompromising and single-minded street bike BMW Motorrad has ever produced. The iconic Boxer-twin powerplant pumps out an impressive 113 bhp with a whopping 115Nm of torque. Built with some remarkably exotic composite and metallurgical materials for a street bike, the Megamoto weighs in at just 179kg, thus giving the bike a mightily impressive, arm-wrenching power to weight ratio. Read More
