Happy Halloween everyone. Here at Ride The Wild Wind we're wondering what you're all up to this spooky holiday season. Maybe as well as zombifing, vamperizing, or mummifying yourself and your friends and family, you're also doing your ride?
We'd love to get any pictures of your Halloween party adventures and we'll put them up on the Ride The Wild Wind Flickr Gallery or all to see.
Send your pictures to – pictures@ridethewildwind.co.uk
Have fun trick or treating!!
U.S. motorcycle maker Victory is struggling, much like it's much larger fellow manufacturer Harley Davidson, with July to September 2009 sales down a staggering 56%!
Victory are trying to weather the storm by restructuring shipments to dealerships but it's hard to see how best to cope with tumbling figures, which for the same period last year amounted to $21 million, dropping to $9,344,000 this year. Also unlike Harley they can't mercilessly chop off limbs, as was done with Buell and MV Augusta, to make savings.
The best sales performance from the company is in accessories and clothing lines which dropped only 11%, meaning somewhere potential owners are hopefully getting ready by dressing as Victory riders until the recession ends.
It's worrying news for bike businesses in general at the minute but to manufacturers of big cruisers you have to wonder if some of their best customers, the retired/retiring big bike buyer off to tour the highways, simply aren't there anymore with pension crisises and financial pressures from depenadants.
Scary times…
The Tokyo Motor Show is awash with EV concepts this year most of which we've covered here. Suzuki however are taking a different tack for their eco friendly scooter by using a hydrogen fuel cell.
Developed by UK scientists and engineers at Intelligent Energy, the cell has a light weight air cooled tank with the gas under very high pressure at 10,000psi.
All looked interesting until a few figures got mentioned,
Suzuki says the scooter is capable of a potential 220 miles range, at 20mph, what!? That may be fine for couriers around town, though I've yet to see a courier going that slow, but what's the range going to be when the speed goes up?
Another flaw is that hydrogen re-fuelling stations aren't exactly easy to come by, so with the range of your new fuel cell scooter, all you could do is circle the garage!
Oh well, nice concept though..
In what appears to be the the next stage in Yamaha’s Gen-Ryu hybrid concept development, the company has released footage of it’s newly named HV-X in action.
A 15KW electric motor married to a 250cc four stroke single uses both manual and auto shut off of the petrol engine to maximise efficiency. When at stand still, or when filtering around the town at low speeds, the petrol engine will rest making the bike a purely electric vehicle for up to a reported 12.5 miles, before the engine sparks to life again.
The styling isn’t bad and this could make for a great commuter should Yamaha ever get around to sending it to a production line.
Ah come on! Who thought of this? What advertising man will admit to liking Star Wars just a little too much, to the point it colours his every project.
Our first impression was huh!? then BWAH HA HA HA HA HA!
Say hello to the 'Lord of Yamaha Adventures' who will be staring at you from the Super-Tenere website, designed as a teaser for the company's forth coming big adventure bike and GS challenger. Launched at the Tokyo Motor Show using a cloth covered stylized mock-up, with very little detail beyond an eight-valve
parallel twin and shaft drive, we'll have to wait a while before we can make any real opinions on what Yamaha has planned..
Unless of course we use 'The Force'
Check out the site here – http://www.yamaha-motor-europe.com/super-tenere/
Some people have all the luck! MCN's Andy Downes has the greatest of jobs doesn't he?!
He's posted a video blog teaser of the track testing he's doing in Japan of Honda's next big thing the VFR1200F. You know RTWWs Blog is a fan of this bike as it ticks all the tech and two-wheel boxes for us and the teaser only makes us desperate for more details.
We'll be watching MCN intently for new posts from Andy, and full details of his test are in the new issue of MCN out Oct 28th. Start queuing for your issue now.
Check out his video below, and hit MCNs website for more info
We have a few blog posts to put up today but we had to start the usually dreadful Monday with some good news, well for Rossi fans anyway. At least one of us will be having a great day as the probably still partying Valentino Rossi has done it again!
Securing 3rd place at Sepang in Malaysia on Sunday put the MotoGP championship in his hands for the 7th time. An excting race in difficult conditions made it all the more sweet as he looked uncertain of a podium finish coming up from so far down the field on the rain soaked track.
Nice work Doc!
Read more on MotoGP.com
Hardly a big push into the EV market Honda!
After selling some 60 million Super Cubs worldwide Honda is giving the virtually indestructible bike an EV makeover.
Honda
unveiled this week at the Tokyo Auto Show an electric version of its popular bike. However, as with all EV concepts range (as speed performance isn't really a big issue here) will be the deal breaker as there are reports of over 300 miles per gallon on the gas sipping original! Surely the EV has to be on par with that or what's the point? Could this be another EV concept that remains just that because it offers nothing to tempt buyers? Honda has said the EV version is supposedly, "Just as functional and convenient as its world famous predecessor.”
If it isn't, maybe they should throw in a 'grannie basket', never know could be a deal breaker!
Just a brief update to say Ride The Wild Wind is now on Twitter. We'll be letting you know when new posts are made here, and hope to chat with Bikers from across the world (and the Twitterverse) on all things motorcycle. Get following us and drop us an @, be great to hear from you.
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