ALL New MotorCycle

Big Green has released the details of the 2010 model line today, and some of the changes are pretty nice. Some of them are simply…meh.

First up is the 2010 ZX-10R Ninja. This is one of the “Meh” entries in the lineup. Not much new to talk about here. They’ve modified the bodywork a little bit. They’ve changed the steering damper to a new–and presumably better–one. And they’ve painted the muffler black. Other than that, next year’s ZX-10R is pretty much status quo ante.

My best advice is to wait for a year if you want a big Ninja. Supposedly, Kawasaki is gonna put the bike through a complete redesign for the 2011 model year. Until then, the new Ninja is pretty much what the old Ninja was.

Another “meh” is the 2010 Versys. It has new headlights, that kind of have a BMW R1200R kind of feel. But it’s is, again, pretty much the same bike as this year’s.

I think we’re done with the “Meh” bikes in the line-up, though.

There are some nice changes to Kawasaki’s premier sports tourer. Not, unfortunately, some of the changes rumored earlier this year, like the night vision and HUD I wrote about a while ago. Instead, the Connie gets something called KTRC, Kawasaki’s first-ever traction control system. Also new is the the K-ACT II anti-lock braking system to control those panic stops, a larger windscreen to solve the complaints about the effectiveness of wind management, bodywork redesigned for better heat management, heated grips, upgraded suspension, and new Bridgestone tires.

Oh, and it’s blue. Blue is nice.

The Z1000 is the bike where major changes have occurred. The current incarnation of the Z1000 is OK…but just OK. Nice, but the power is kind of soft and squishy. The new Z1000 looks like a big step forward. It’s pretty much a completely new motorcycle, in fact.

First, the engine is completely new. It’s a 1043cc I-4 power plant adapted from the ZX10R, and it provides 136HP and 91lb-ft of torque. That’s a serious improvement over the current incarnation’s 953cc mill from the ZX-9. That means noticeably better acceleration, and improved top-end speed.

Next, the steel backbone frame is gone, replaced by an all-aluminum frame with a monocoque main spar. Fuel storage is now beneath the seat, so the narrower frame and changed fuel tank offers a narrower profile for better knee gripping. That’s helped by the narrow bottom and flared top of the…uh, whatever the thing on top now is, instead of a fuel tank.

There are lots of suspension changes, too, with the rear suspension being an all-new “horizontal” design, and more aggressive front-end geometry.

The styling has been updated, too, giving it a noticeable B-King vibe, but whether that’s a good thing or not is in the eye of the beholder.

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Motorcycle-USA’s Ken Hutchison is at the Tokyo Motor Show this week, and he’s got a round-up of the show at MC-USA;s web site. You can read it here. I have. What a bore-fest this thing sounds like.

Kawasaki’s not even there. Harley-Davidson is there, but Buell Motorcycles make up a big part of their display, which makes them look sort of stupid. Again. I’m surprised they didn’t force Erik to go, and just stand there weeping publicly, while Harley executives bashed a couple of 1125Rs with sledgehammers.

Other than that, it sounds like everybody was showing off “Green power, maaaan!” and “Save the planet, maaaan!” technology.

Over at Yamaha the big presentation featured the ‘Art of Engineering’. In this philosophy the hot topics were the Smart Power scooter and bicycle-styled experimental vehicles on display in front of the true core of Yamaha’s business: The V-Max R1, Road Star cruiser, new YZ450F and, of course, the world-conquering YZR-M1 MotoGP machine.

Apparently everybody there was really agog over this:

Wow. I just keep looking at it, because I keep trying to think of something I hate more. And I can’t.

I have no doubt the Japanese love it, though. They probably think it’d be a really fun way to wind down after finishing their latest rape comic. Or maybe an easy way to zip home instead of being packed into the subway like sardines during their commute. Just a silent, environmentally-friendly way to get home, followed by watching a TV game show that involves contestants sitting in freezing water while their testicles are crushed in an electric vice.

Yeah, the Japanese enjoy a lot of weird crap, so I bet they adore this monstrosity.

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Buell Motorcycles may be gone, but their influence lives on in this new cruiser from CR&S, which will available in limited numbers–and only in Europe, alas–for 2010.

Notice, if you will, the underslung exhaust and odd side pods, so reminiscent of the Buell 1125R. It even has a V-Twin powerplant. Air cooled. With push rods.

The similarity ends there, however. The engine isn’t a re-engineered Evo, but a massive 1,916cc v-twin motor. The side pods house the headlights, rather than air scoops for the (non-existent) radiator.

The company showed this off as a concept bike in August, but apparently it was a pretty concrete concept. It had to be if they’re ready to produce it now.

They haven’t released any figures on weight or horsepower/torque, but it certainly looks beefy with that huge engine filling up the space under the tank.

At €20,000 (about $35,000 at today’s rate of exchange), it certainly is a pricey beast, but since they’ll be making about…oh, let’s say 50 or so of these bikes over the next year, I’m sure they’ll find the buyers they need to take it off the factory’s hands.

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By far the most popular search that leads people to this site, is a search for the rumored variants of the BMW R1200RT for 2010, such as “R1300RT”, or R1250RT”. Everyone seems to want to know what the 2010 version of the BMW R-bikes are going to be.

Well, now we know. It’s the R1200RT, and R1200GS.

BMW announced today that the 2010 R-Series bikes will all sport a DOHC Boxer motor derived from the Hp2 Sport. Unlike the HP2 Sport, however, the R Engine will rev lower, and put out less horsepower.

So, the horsepower figure for the R-series Boxer will remain unchanged at 110HP, but torque will increase by 3lb-ft to 88lb-ft at an unchanged 6,000RPM, for faster acceleration. The redline will increase to 8,500 RPM from the current 8,000rpm.

The R1200RT will receive an updated fairing and windscreen, designed to offer better wind protection. The instrument panel has also been updated, with redesigned instruments and a visor to help keeps the sun’s glare off a bit better. Also updated are the handlebar controls, with the old-style paddle turn signals on each side being replaced by standard turn signals. An additional control is a rotary thumbwheel on the left handgrip to allow the rider to cycle through all the stereo options without taking his hand off the grip. The stereo itself gets rid of BMW’s CD player, although a jack is provided for external audio sources.

TheR1200GS is visually unchanged from the previous year’s model, except for the cylider covers, which have two bolts, instead of four. The new engine, on the other hand also gets the 110HP output, and increase of 5 horsies over last year’s. There’s also an accessory LED headlight for a few extra bucks.

Overall, the change to the DOHC engine doesn’t provide as much oomph as I would have expected, considering that the HP2 engine actually puts out 130HP in the HP2. I would’ve thought that BMW would have added more ponies to the R-series boxer, rather than upping the torque a bit.

I’m also a little disappointed in the new styling for the R1200RT. I think last year’s version looked better, and came in better colors than white, beige and two-tone gray and white. Overall, I suspect that GS afficionados will be a bit more pleased with the 2010 update than their RT brethren.

There’s tons of detail available from BMW about the new models in PDF format, which you can acquire here for the GS, and here for the RT.

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oto Guzzi has announced the newest generation of their Norge sport-tourer, the Norge 8V. New for 2010 is a new 1200cc L-twin with 4 valves per cylinder, as well as a redesigned fairing for better heat management and weather protection, and some more comfort features.

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For the 2010 model year, KTM announced a while ago that they would undertake a “strategic price realignment” to make their bikes more competitive in the US marketplace. That’s probably a wise move, considering that KTMs, while nice bikes, have always been very pricey. But the announcement didn’t give us much of an idea of what “strategic price realignment” meant to the Austrians. Now we know.

First up is theKTM RC8, the base-model superbike with the 1190cc V-Twin engine. The price for this bike has been slashed by $3,000, with a new MSRP of $16,498.

The RC8’s 1148cc V-Twin mill pumps out 155HP at 10,000RPM and 88.5 lb-ft of torque at 8,000RPM. Without fuel, the ready-to-race weight is 405 lbs.

But, maybe you’re one of those lusty, gusty fellows who needs a bit more power. If so, the RC8 R, with it’s 170HP , 1195cc V-Twin, and upgraded components, has also been priced significantly lower, at 19,998. They’ve got red Bull and Akraprovic special edition models, at slightly north of $23k, but the R model is now superbike ready, at a bit less of a superbike price.

All of the other KTM models, including the popular–but agonizingly ugly–990 Adventure also see similar price cuts.

Aaaaaugh! My eyes! My eyes! The pain!

I’m sure uglier motorcycles have been seen out on the road. But not by reliable observers.

I hear it’s quite popular among the well-to-do adventure biker set, though.

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BMW introduced an inline six-cylinder café racer concept at the 2009 EICMA show in Milan, Italy.

Inline-six engines have a staple in BMW’s automobiles for decades and the German manufacturer’s motorcycle division took on the challenge of adapting the straight-six to a bike without making it too long or too wide. The result is the BMW Motorrad Concept 6, and an evolution BMW says “will further expand the K-Series in the foreseeable future”.

The Concept 6’s engine is about four inches slimmer than BMW’s production inline-six engines, making it just a bit wider than a large-capacity four. To keep the width down, the engine has a relatively long stroke with very small gaps between cylinders. Electrical ancillaries and their drive components are positioned behind the crankshaft and above the transmission to further minimize engine width.

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Last week, I ordered some Ram-Mount devices to mount my GPS and iPod/XM Inno devices to my FJR. Previously, I used the cheap, jury-rig method of zip-tying some mounts to the handlebars. But, the Ram-Mount stuff arrived this afternoon, so now I’m stylin’. Click on the photos for hi-res (15 Megapixel) images.

The nice thing about the Ram-Mount mountings is that they are really adjustable, so you can move things around so that you get a clear view of everything. The mount and device holders have rubber-coated aluminum balls, conected to a 4″ armature that tightens on both balls with a large wing nut. When you tighten the nut, it locks the mount and device in solidly.

This mount affixes to the top of the brake reservoir, with the ball in the center of the mount. They also have a reservoir mount with the ball sticking off to the side, if you prefer that. The mount comes with three different sets of torx screws of varying lengths, so they can fit pretty much any bike’s reservoir screws. There are 6 screw holes, so you can mount them on either two-hole reservoirs like the FJR, of a four-hole reservoir on other bikes.

I got a universal device holder because I switch out my iPod and my XM Inno unit. This is a handlebar mount which fits–barely–on the AE model of the FJR. The shift unit hogs up a lot of space that is empty on the A-model FJR’s. Despite that, I managed to get the handlebar mount properly seated.

You may notice that my Inno is all banged up. That’s because I didn’t properly secure on the old jury-rigged mount I replaced this evening. On my way home, I zommed off from a light–and left the Inno behind. It got pretty scratched and banged up, but, miraculously, no one drove over it and crushed it, and it still works fine. I think. I won’t really know until I try to listen to live programming with it tomorrow. But the recorded stuff I had on it played fine all the way home.

The glove box on the FJR is just big enough to hold the 12-volt power plugs. I got the Radio Shack car plug that splits the power cord into two 12-volt car plugs, and the YomTom and Inno are plugged into those and stored in the glove box. The power cables run out of the glove box, through the cable harnesses on the triple tree, then up to the devices. The power cords are small enough so that I can close and lock the glove box…which is full to the brim now with car plugs and extra cable.

Fortunately, when you turn the FJR off, it cuts power to the 12-volt car plug on the glove box, so I don’t have to open it, drag out 12 feet of cord and unplug it.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll get to test the mounts out on the road. So far, though, they seem about 1,000% better than zip-tying universal car accessory mounts to the handlebars.

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After months of anticipation, Honda released the images, specifications, and availability details of the new VFR replacement, the VFR1200F.

Let’s start with the pictures. Shown below is the only version that will appear in the US,with its red livery. Why the euros get multiple color choices, and we have to be satisfied with a single color is beyond me, but here it is. Click the thumbnails to enlarge.

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The Norton Commando is one of the iconic bikes of motorcycling. Back when I was a kid, and the average rider was tooling around on a 500cc BSA, the Norton Commando was the bike to have if you wanted a big, hellishly fast–in 1970 terms–motorcycle. Sadly, when Nortun went TU several years ago, the Commando disappeared…until now.

Stuart Garner’s revived Norton Motocycles is now offering the 961cc Commando for the 2010 model year.

The 961 Commando will come in three models: the SE, Cafe racer, and Sport models shown here.

The differences are mainly stylistic, as all three models come with a 961cc parallel-twin, dry sump, pushrod engine, much like the venerable original, which is rated at 80HP at 6,500RPM, and 59 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 RPM.

They all sport Öhlins suspension with full adjustment. Stopping power is provided by twin Brembo 320mm semi-floating hi-carbon stainless steel discs & Brembo 4 piston radial calipers up front, and a single Brembo 220mm disc, with Brembo 2 piston “Gold Line” calipers out back. A 5-speed gearbox sends the power to the rear wheel via a 525 O-ring chain drive.

The three models have minor weight differences, but the ball park is 415lbs dry, although oil, hydraulic fluid, and enough gas to fill the 4.5 gallon tank will add another 50 pounds or so.

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While covering the SEMA show this year for AutoGuide.com, we came across this concept bike that was displayed in the Toyota booth. Other than the information plate that was posted beside the fenced off bike, no one in the booth had anymore info or news about it.

Check out a list of specs after the jump.

Bike Specifications:

• Specially lightened and polished frame
• Carbon fiber body panels
• Custom fuel tank
• A fan driven forced air induction into a specially constructed intake system with fuel injection
• The intake and exhaust have been reversed on the cylinder for optimal weight balance
• The rear shock absorber has a specially tilted reservoir to keep it away from the hear displaced by the exhaust pipe
• Unique air start system utilizing the frame as the air tank
• A light weight special aluminum extrusion cooling system takes the place of conventional radiators
• On board data acquisition system able to measure in real time functions such as suspension travel, engine temperature, speed, etc.
• Specially made brake rotors with the Toyota logos cut into them
• A specially made swingarm with the Toyota logo machined into it
• A light weight carbon fiber muffler
• Special light weight wheels
• Extensive use of titanium and exotic metals

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With the sheer expanse of super slab here in the U.S. motorcycles are all about being big: Big power, big speed, and of course big cost. However, a new crop of motorcycles from Kawasaki and Suzuki prove that a motorcycle doesn’t have to go 186 miles per hour, have you stretched out across the fuel tank or cost over ten grand to be fun. Meet the 2009 Kawasaki ER-6N and Suzuki Gladius.

While both of these motorcycles are new in America, their platforms are based off motorcycles we’ve already sampled. The ER-6n is based off the recently redesigned Ninja 650R complete with its friendly, 649cc Parallel Twin cradled in a compact steel chassis and wrapped in sharp futuristic bodywork that turns heads. The Gladius on the other hand is modeled off of Suzuki’s beyond popular SV650 model. It’s powered by a 645cc V-Twin wedged in an easily manipulated steel chassis. Like the ER it features a new contemporary shape. The final similarly is that both of these bikes are affordably priced in the sixes, which mean you get a good amount of thrill for a reasonable price.

On paper these motorcycles are roughly identical, but after a few weeks living with these motorcycles day-in and day-out we’ve discovered some striking difference. So follow along as Motorcycle-USA helps you decide which one belongs in the garage.

For My Money

Adam Waheed, Road Test Editor, 6 foot, 180 lbs:

Honestly, both of these motorcycles would be perfect for a new rider as beyond anything else they are small and easy to ride. But the thing I really like about the Suzuki is that although it’s designed for a newbie, it’s still so well engineered that an experienced rider can hop on it, rip around and come back with as big as a smile on their face as if they just got a GSX-R sportbike. It’s truly amazing how much fun Suzuki infused in this motorcycle. If I was in the market for a new small displacement sporty motorcycle the Gladius would be it.


Steve Atlas, Executive Editor, 5 foot, 8 inches, 150 lbs:

The ER-6n is a funny motorcycle. It is definitely more oriented to someone who is new to the sport of motorcycling. Not to say that the Gladius isn’t, but the Kawi just feels a tad bit smaller, a little more agile, more docile power, etc. When I picked up the Gladius I told Suzuki’s press officer, Garrett Kai, that if I could leave the store and, right off the bat, having never ridden the machine, wheelie the Gladius for the several blocks to the stoplight at the end of the road without putting the front end down, I would give it a good review. And the Suzuki did just that and more. I’ll take a new Gladius please.

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Exiting the final fourth-gear, 120-mph corner at the Algarve circuit in Portimao, Portugal – strapped to a 200-plus-horsepower Yamaha YZF-R1 World Superbike, bars twitching and snapping, the rear tire spinning and bucking, all while climbing up the completely blind and massive front straightaway – two things suddenly become crystal clear: Ben Spies’ championship-winning SBK isn’t for sissies, and it just plain doesn’t get any better than that! This truly is Livin’ the Dream…

But before we dive into the details of the Sterilgarda R1 Superbike, let’s back up a few steps…to the beginning. You might be wondering why I am lucky enough to be halfway around the world at one of the top racetracks on the planet riding such an utterly priceless machine. Well, the long and short of it is Infront Sports is bloody mad – and thank goodness! To break it down, they are the rights holder and organizers of World Superbike and have set up an annual test for a select few journalists (less than 20 worldwide) to ride not one, but all seven of the factory World Superbikes the Monday following the final round of the championship. And, you guessed it, MotoUSA was invited. To say I jumped on that invite quickly would be the understatement of the century – my RSVP was telepathically emailed back before I even received the email.

Protocol for the test was to get 15 minutes on each bike, with a 20-minute break between machines. Quick turnaround was the name of the game as we had seven bikes to ride in one day. Complicating things slightly was the fact I had never so much as turned a lap around the track on anything but a scooter. Some serious time was spent playing Xbox and studying on-board laps on YouTube … and, surprisingly, I was up to speed in no time. Amazingly, the video game really did help – a lot!

Anyhow, enough BS, time for the good stuff: Here’s our take on the seven factory bikes which made up the 2009 wsb grid, compiled in the order in which we rode them.

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