Daily Motorcycle Blog roundup April 12, 2007

April 12, 2007

budlight

• BBC News - Neil Hodgson the former world superbike champion has signed with Ducati to be an official test rider.
• Helmet Hair covers denim helmets by Nexx and I’m sure correctly calls it out as a simple publicity stunt.
• Road Racing World has a press release about Oxtar boots becoming the official boot of Rich Oliver’s Mystery School. I’ve never heard of either but the names of both are quite quirky.
• Motorcycle Misadventures has a post about a new motorcycle travel forum they’re starting up. If the posts in this forum hold up to the quality and work that has been put into the homepage for the site, I think you can expect a really good site.
• Erin Baker posted a rant entitled “Bag the bike, not the biker” encouraging people to not judge a rider by the type a bike they are riding as they may enjoy many different flavors of bikes. I totally agree with that sentiment as I enjoy a KLR650 immensely and I find that most people don’t really get why.
• BeachCruiser has an entry about Red Head gadget’s motorcycle map clips. While I respect their entrepreneurial spirit, I can’t ever see myself wanting one of these. I guess I’ve never been a fan of bikes with windshield’s big enough that this would be much use. I think she should make a run them for COG (Concours Owner’s Group) as I think this is right up their alley. I’ve seen more Concours with custom master cylinder covers saying the owner’s group name than anything else.
• thescooterscoop has probably the most captivating picture of the day in my opinion. I don’t know how many motorcyclists were lego fans, but I figure out of the ones that are in the correct age group its higher than norm. Anyway the picture is of a Vespa scooter made out of Legos. Check it out.
• Mike Werner covers the new Tom Tom motorcycle specific GPS.
• The Superbike Blog discusses an article about cruisers being on the way out. I don’t agree with the argument at all really. I think the days of mega cruisers and let’s see who has the most cc size may be coming to an end for the general public, but I don’t see cruisers heading on the way out. I do think the image of custom cruisers has been over sold and frankly I sometimes get weary of all the custom bike shows on tv, I mean they are fun for a while, but very repetitive. He makes a couple assertions which don’t hold up really. The fact that Victory’s newest bike is a tourer not a cruiser is insignificant, as I would bet the nation wide sales of he Victory Vision are less than 1,000. The decline of V-Rod selling price is also a moot point, any bike that sells over MSRP in the beginning eventually sells for lower it just takes time. I would say the fact that Honda “dropped” the Valkyrie is insignificant I wouldn’t put it as really dropped but simply never upgraded it to 1800 (although there was the Rune, and I would bet it met Honda’s goals for such a bike). This is inline with my thoughts that the days of “megacruisers” might be limited though.
• Motorcyclist at Large: gives a synopsis of the new Honda Unicorn a model which we don’t get here in the U.S. Check it out to see a Honda you aren’t likely to see here in the U.S.
• Kropotkin Thinks follows up on his post about Ilmor’s decline by mentioning that Andrew Pitt will be getting support from Ten Kate Honda.

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