I hope this guy’s got some serious riding chops to get him out of a snag if some blind cager makes a mis-steak. He’s hot-dogging around on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway, presumably coming home from an Australia Day party, with a barbecue slung over his body and the grill across his visor like a medieval jousting helmet.
Naturally the media think he’s a dangerous idiot, but clearly they don’t knowhowbikersroll in other parts of the world. Personally I think all he needs is some corks hanging off his helmet and an open can of Foster’s to make him Australian of the year.
Update: As it turns out, our BBQ man is embarrassed that this picture has caused so much fuss. But then, he’s also keen to let people know that this barby, which he found in hard rubbish, isn’t the biggest thing he’s carried on his bike… In fact, he once made it home with a two-seater couch strapped to the back. Sorry mate, that doesn’t take the prize for me. In Hanoi I once saw a guy with a two-seater couch and two one-seater couches all strapped up and balanced on the back of a 125cc scooter and lurching through traffic. Keep trying!
To be fair, the Yamaha R1 has always been known to attract a certain type of person, so maybe we should have seen this one coming… Yes, what’s not chromed is covered in snakeskin. Normally this kind of thing would have me pointing my finger straight at Texas, but we actually ran across this in Paris where they’re supposed to have taste.
KMP would appear to be responsible for this rolling tragedy, but I’ll forgive them because they also built my favourite GSX-R streetfighter, which is at least three times as badass as this one is try-hard.
Seems the Suzuki Bandit 1250 isn’t the only hoon strapping on saddlebags in the name of practicality; Buell’s Ulysses adventure tourer has been reinterpreted as a long-distance ride with shorter travel suspension, a lower seat height, a goofy windscreen and a whopping big set of luggage. Meet the XB12XT.
The Ulysses’ semi-dirt tyres have been replaced by Pirelli Diablo Strada tourers, and the XT even has a set of heated grips. Good, sensible fun… I guess. US RRP is $12,995.
Vast numbers of early CBR900 Fireblades, bought and crashed by riders who weren’t prepared for the bikes’ then-revolutionary power-to-weight figures, have become fodder for backyard custom stunters and streetfighters - so you’ll probably recognise this frame and tank.
There’s nothing common about this effort though - Frenchman Eric Duminy, of MotoLand Amiens, has thrown out everything but the motor and frame and built not only a dirtbike, but an enduro racer. Good lord. (more…)
Perhaps inspired by the wave of glowing nostalgia that greeted Ducati’s SportClassic and Triumph’s Scrambler, re-animated Italian brand Moto Morini have tweaked their 1200cc ‘9½’ v-twin roadster into two retro editions, the 1200 Sport and the Scrambler.
Designed and built in Perth, Australia, by road train driver turned stunt-jumper Ray Baumann, this car-crushing, two-wheeled behemoth is almost thirty feet (9 metres) long, ten feet (3 metres) high and weighs as much as a school bus.
Developed over three years, the 13.6 tonne Monster Motorbike is powered by a Detroit Diesel truck engine and six-speed Allison automatic and uses a two-speed Eaton differential from a road train to drive a massive chain on each side of the rear wheel.
The wheels and tyres themselves are from a Caterpillar 80 tonne front end loader and are almost 10 feet (3 metres) high and over 3 feet (1 meter) wide.
Thomas Luthi must have been rather impressed with himself for hanging onto this little moment while qualifying at the Saschenring last year. Man, those 250GP bikes can handle some lean angle eh? Just goes to show that not everyone that says “I saved it on my knee” is talking bollocks!
The top speed war is officially over. Motorcycles win.
Acabion’s Hayabusa-powered GTBO road-ready streamliner has taken the velocity crown back from those smug Bugatti Veyron owners in a pretty comprehensive fashion and placed it back into the rightful ownership of us bike nuts. For a bargain price of only EUR540,000 (US$790,000) you can now buy yourself a vehicle that will easily eclipse the Bugatti’s 250mph top speed - using less than 20% throttle. Take that, MadMadMark007.
The Acabion GTBO features a turbocharged ‘Busa engine tuned to the gills and belting out anywhere from 354 to 750 horsepower. Its power-to-weight ratio (between 1000 and 2000 horsepower per tonne) and its bullet-like aerodynamics allow it to hit an electronically limited top speed of 340mph… Using only half throttle. That’s near as damn to 550kmh in the new money, or a little over 150 metres every second. God only knows where you can buy tyres rated for that sort of speed, and you’d best leave your passport in the glovebox in case you hit a pebble and need to catch a plane back home.
You should be a reasonable chance at the traffic-light drag races too, because if you gun it and that poor, tortured rear tyre hooks up, the designers claim you should be able to hit 300mph in under 30 seconds. In other words, there’s no vehicle better than a GTBO if you really want to GTFO.
We’ve seen airbags sneaking into the world of motorcycles a bit recently, what with Honda’s airbag-equipped Goldwing and ripcord-operated inflating jackets from Motoair and Hit-Air, which are triggered by a sudden unplanned separation of bike and rider. But Dainese have gone one step further, recognising that in racing, riders often hit the ground while still on their bikes in lowside crashes.
The Dainese D-Air system is mounted in the upper back aero hump of the leather racing suit, and uses a series of accelerometers and electronically operated rate gyros to determine when things have gone skewiff on the racetrack. It then deploys in 40 milliseconds, providing neck, shoulder and collarbone cushioning to the falling rider before they hit the deck.
It’s strictly a racing system at the moment, under trial by Dainese-sponsored 125GP riders Simone Giorgi, Michael Ranseder and Marco Simoncelli (pictured above at Valencia), all of whom have taken the opportunity to put the airbag through its paces in race and practice crashes.
A road version will likely be investigated once Dainese are happy with the system’s performance on track. It won’t be cheap, but having seen a lot of friends deal with nasty collarbone and shoulder injuries, I’d rate it as a serious safety tool. After the jump, take a look at a video of the D-Air system in action thanks to a Dainese test rider… And you thought your job was a drag!
There was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when if you wanted to be a tyre-shredding, wheelie-popping, society-menacing hooligan, the Suzuki Bandit 1200 was the pick of the showroom. Cheap, hardy, and chock full of stump-pulling grunt, the Bandit gave many punters their first taste of air underneath the front wheel.
Well, just like Henry Rollins has given up punk-rock brawling and started doing speaking tours and TV shows, Suzuki’s big bad bandit 1250 has just been released as a sensible mile muncher. It’s a bit odd to see a full set of panniers and a top box on a Bandit, let alone the Garmin Zuno sat-nav system hanging off the handlebars, but that’s what you’ll get for the extra UK£1000 you pay for the Bandit 1250 Grand Touring. The GT also features a bellypan, which looks nice but is hardly what you’d call an imperative touring addition.
It’ll still have great gobs of power, and probably no shortage of attitude in the right hands - and it’ll likely be as easy and bulletproof to ride and own as the Banditos of old - but to me, “Bandit” and “Touring” go together like “Goldwing” and “Racing.” Oh wait, they’re doing that too…
Pic of the GT’s bar-mounted sat nav after the jump.
