Federation Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM) has launched their new website. The old FIM site was rather poor. It was only useful for finding press releases, but it was not regularly updated. My expectations for the new site are low and I will probably still be disappointed. But it has video for highlights. That’s something…
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Cobra Motorcycles president Sean Hilier was on the Rush Limbaugh program yesterday, to discuss the notorious Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) and its devastating effect on his company.
I didn’t hear the show but you can read the transcript here. According to Hillier, Cobra employs fewer than 50 people, but there are about [...]
I’ve just returned from my pilgrimage to Indianapolis and the annual Powersports Dealer Expo. There was a lot going on there this year, despite the economy. The biggest news was the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, a law that went into effect last week and summarily killed about 20% of the motorcycle industry [...]
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We have written here before about what price fixing in the rubber market means to the motorcycle industry. The corporate corruption on the part of our beloved suppliers continues.
According to this Oligopoly Watch post “Getting hosed“, the EU competition commission recently issued $173 million in fines to six global corporations for conspiring to fix the [...]
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I love the Cobra Motorcycle company. It’s a great American story and proof that you don’t have to be Japanese to make a competitive dirt bike. I wrote about Cobra last year in a piece on just that topic.
Now this Detroit Free Press article on Cobra features Cobra as an American manufacturer who is growing [...]
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Tonight’s show on Pit Pass was good. Good interviews, especially if you’re interested in industry stuff like I am. Important note: The crew mentioned that their email has been broken and they were not aware of the problem. So they asked that any listener who has emailed the show and not received a response to [...]
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A 32-year-old Spanish automotive designer and a partner plan to relaunch the historic Bultaco motorcycle brand with the release of a modern 450cc motocross bike with retro-modern styling taken from the beautiful 1970’s-era Pursangs.
Jim Palau-Ribes and partner Roger Gubert have been working on the project for seven years and hope to build a prototype 450cc [...]
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This is only tangentially about motorcycles, and only in the sense that it points to how the world of the future will work. But it’s an important insight into our future. This NYTimes editorial by Thomas Friedman (author of “The World is Flat” and “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”) is about a new kind [...]
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Austrian motorcycle manufacturer KTM has filed patents for a new, 2-wheel-drive, hybrid motorcycle. Following KTM’s announcement of their all-electric zero-emissions bike, which is planned for production by 2010, this hybrid features an internal combustion engine driving the rear wheel with an electric motor driving the front wheel. I don’t know exactly how it works, but [...]
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There is a very disturbing letter in the upcoming (November 26, 2008, Issue #47) edition of Cycle News from AMA member Jerry Fouts. Jerry is the ATV Congressman for District 36 and attended the 2008 Congress.
I have long wondered just how effective the AMA Congress really is at effecting change in the organization. Here’s what [...]
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I rode my first motorcycle at 5 years old, sitting behind my Dad on his ElectraGlide. I learned to ride on my own courtesy of Briggs & Stratton. At 12 I bought my first "real" motorcycle - a red SL70 - with paper route money. Today I still ride old bikes and air-cooled V-Twins (just not Harleys.)
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