Considering just how rare Bimotas actually are, they’ve had a pretty strong influence on modern sportbikes. Take this Bimota HB3 for example: just 100 were ever made. And yet you can see that fully-faired, race-inspired styling that led to more mass-produced bikes like the GSX-R. In fact, Yamaha was very directly “inspired” by the Bimota’s…
A sportbike powered by a 1064cc two-valve pushrod twin seems positively antediluvian in context and was absolutely outclassed by the competition even when new. But Moto Guzzi managed to take their rugged and very entertaining powertrain and fit it into their 1100 Sport that, while not cutting-edge, offered up charisma, handling, durability, and exclusivity. I’ve…
The 900CR is a bit of a forgotten Ducati. Offered as part of the late 1990’s Ducati range, the 900CR and its sister 900SS weren’t objects of lust like the Ducati 916/996/998 but also weren’t the companies sales leader like the “standard” Monster series. The 900 series was targeted towards non-hard core sport rider, a…
Ducati’s Monster was a wonder of parts-bin engineering and basically saved the company from financial ruin, becoming the company’s best-selling model of all time by a healthy margin and bringing Ducati’s mystique to the masses. The four-valve superbikes may have won the glory but they were highly impractical for daily use, expensive to maintain, and…
Bimota’s successful line of Ducati-powered bikes seems a bit unconventional for the brand, considering they’d always been about creating machines that fused powerful, well-engineered Japanese engines with lightweight, race-bred frames to create bikes that were more than the sum of their parts. But machines like this DB4 seemed to be more about just distilling a…
What looks good doesn’t always work well: some of the most beautiful cars ever built were created by eye, without the aid of modern aerodynamics. Sleek machines like the Jaguar E-Type and the Corvette Stingray may look impossibly fast, but often try to leave the road at elevated speeds… Racing machines on the other hand…
With all the flack Pierre Terblanche gets for his futuristic restyle of the Superbike line, it’s easy to forget just why Ducati gave him a job in the first place. And while the 999 is finally beginning to be recognized for the design classic it is, bikes like his Supermono and today’s Ducati MH900e are there…
After giving the LeMans token updates for several years, Moto Guzzi made some great modernizations in 1993 and named the result after another endurance racing classic – Daytona. With help from the brilliant gentleman racer Dr. John Wittner, Guzzi fielded the four-valve per cylinder 1000cc engine in their long stable chassis. Though built in low numbers and not…
