Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Long live the two-stroke

Michael Scott's "In The Paddock" column in the new Cycle News, (pg 60, July 2, 2008) is all about the two-stroke motorcycle engine, its past, present, and future. Some interesting stuff there. Mostly Scott talks about road racing and the death of the 250 GP class, which DORNA has killed effective 2010. But he also interviews Jan Witteveen, legendary Aprilia two-stroke engine designer and gets his views on the state of the two-stroke, plus discusses possible changes at the FIM to bring the two-stroke back to MX.

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Thursday, June 5, 2008

Having failed with Ducati, HD now tries to buy MV Agusta

According to this Forbes.com report, Harley-Davidson is in an advanced stage of talks to buy part or all of Italian motorcycle company MV Agusta. Why would HD buy an Italian sportbike company when they already have Buell?

Because big companies have to grow sales - year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter - always growing. When sales slow (as they have in the motorcycle market for the past year or so) there are only two things you can do:

• Invest in developing new products or new markets for your existing products (both of which take time)
• Buy customers (and sales) via acquisition

When it comes to buying motorcycle companies, Italy is about the only place you can go. H-D flirted with buying Ducati last year but was rebuffed. We'll see if this turns out differently.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Finally! D.C. says we'll get our answer this week.

In this week's Racer Head Davey Coombs said the Big News we've all been waiting for - what's going to happen to the AMA Toyota Motocross Championshps - will likely be announced before Hangtown next weekend. To quote DC:

Needless to say, there are going to be a few confused people out there, but the vast majority of motocross fans and industry folks will just be glad to put this all behind them and start focusing on the racing and the future.

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Fairytales and Myths About Modern Racing

I just saw a boisterous rebuttal of an earlier article – The Long-term Effects of Production-based Racing – over on the TMSuzuki Yahoo! group. I can't post it here because I don't have permission but I hope the author will stop by and do it himself. The author takes great exception to my assertion that a current race-tuned 4-stroke is more complex and costly to maintain than a comparable two-stroke, and my assertion that the complexity and ongoing cost of the modern 4-stroke is not appealing to a significant portion of 30+, 40+, and 50+ riders.

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Saturday, March 8, 2008

Dingman and Edmondson Interviewed by SPEED

From Mike Kincaid of Rampant Racing comes this link to two video interviews over at SPEED. There is a 4 1/2-minute interview with Rob Dingman, AMA president, and a much more informative 10-minute interview with Roger Edmondson of the Daytona Motorsports Group. If you are concerned about the future of American motorcycle racing I think the Edmondson interview will give you hope.