2007

Honda CBR600RR 

Racetrack Serious

Honda CBR600RR Launch
Barber Motorsports Park
February 2007

The sportbike market in general, and the 600cc sportbike in particular, has become increasingly bi-polar since the late 1990s. It started with the track-biased testing of the moto-media and was reinforced by the increased profile of road racing and the ever-rising popularity of track days. These forces combined to demand that the manufacturers deliver sport bikes with the hard emphasis on sport. Of course, as the emphasis goes to ‘sport’ the streetability of the bikes is compromised. Ergonomics designed for twenty minute sessions of high-speed athletic track riding are brutal for any sort of real-world riding. Engines designed to top out dynamometer comparison tests often suffer from lean spots in portions of the powerband which are never used on the track but always used on the street as the fuel injection curves are tweaked to pass emission tests.

BMW HP2 Sport

One For The Fans

BMW HP2 Sport
Ascari, Spain
December 6, 2007

A sportbike with excellent headlights.

Existentialism and Smokestack Industry in Nippon

Kawasaki Media Tour

Japan
May 22–29

Wild Card Editor’s Note-

National politics are both sport and livelihood for the residents of Washington, D.C. Periodically we have elections but since most of the residents of the country are either ignorant (vote on bad information) or apathetic (don’t vote) few career politicians are ever displaced from their offices for their actions. This allows politicians to vote based on their donor base interests and not on their constituent’s interests. Periodically the sheer shamelessness of the process is exposed in the more egregious cases (see: Abramoff, DeLay, Jefferson) but for the most part your country is run by professional lobbyist trading campaign money for favors.

Although there are a few toothless laws that regulate the activities, one of the time honored activities is known as the “junket”. Junkets are often called “fact finding” trips which involve a fair amount of golf in exotic locations.

Perhaps more insidious to the apathetic and listless American public is the “Movie Junket” where film critics are selectively vetted by studios in return for favorable reviews of the films. I mean, it's one thing if your elected representatives decide to forego oversight of the country’s food, energy, water, banking, healthcare, credit cards or real estate but what if you waste 90 minutes seeing ‘Driven’ because some guy got a plane ticket and hotel room to come see the movie?

In the enthusiast press this can be even more insidious. Many magazines are owned by large corporations that depend on massive amounts of advertising dollars to make their numbers. Subscribers do not buy advertisements and researching articles costs a lot of money so the logical business move is to use manufacture money to provide content (trips, bike reviews, press launches,etc) all in such a manner so as not to offend the same companies in order to keep the flow of advertising dollars flowing.

All those bike reviews I write for the magazine are mostly based on press launches where all expenses (sometime lavish, sometimes basic) have been covered by the manufacturer. At least in those circumstances my mission is a little more straightforward. I show up, I ride the bike, get some pictures, try, to the best of my abilities, to convey what the bike is like, and then leave it to the comparison tests to sort out the relative ranking. As a bonus, I know that if I write something that is off message for the manufacturer it is Editor Ulrich who will have to face the irate delegation from the OEM and not me; a moment of schadenfreude in its own right.

In the past fifteen years of writing for RW I have only been on two straight junkets. The first was a Japan goodwill tour by Honda and now, a second by Kawasaki. These trips do offer an opportunity to learn, research and write in more depth than a simple press launch but if you see a lot of coverage about Kawasaki the company and many of the same pictures (for the most part we were not allowed use of our own cameras) appearing in multiple magazines and websites over the next couple months.

With that conscience assuaging disclosure I can now relate some of what I learned about Kawasaki Heavy Industries limited.

– SPQF

2007 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R

Barber Motorsports Park
December 8–9, 2006

A green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat under which it feeds.

 

36-24-36, Only if she's 5'3" 

Autopolis, Japan

All Japan Road Race Series

Kawasaki Media Tour
May 28, 2007

Words and Picture by Sam Quarelli Fleming

As part of the good will junket of Japan by Kawasaki the collective American journalist contingency was treated to two days at Kawasaki’s magnificent race track: Autopolis. The first day was a during the fourth of the seven round Japanese national race series. The second was a track day for interested journalists. 

Nordschleife Über Alles

BMW prototypes an Edelweiss tour
of the Nurburgring North Course

2007 Suzuki GSX-R 1000

Jumping the Shark

Phillip Island, Australia
February 8, 2007

Once upon a time there was a TV show called “Happy Days”. This romanticized vision of the 1950s (devoid, for instance, of: red scares, ruthless conformity and systemic racism) was widely regarded for its fresh and uplifting tales of a simpler time. At one point in the show a new character was introduced into the story line. That character rode a motorcycle and wore a black leather jacket. Although ‘the Fonz’ was supposed to be only around for one episode he quickly became one of the stars of the show.

On one dark day the writers of the show ran out of ideas. They were dry. They smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, and threw darts but nothing came of it. There was no new high school dilemma they could rehash, no moral crisis to be solved by doing the right thing, no more good-natured sibling tension to exploit. Grasping for straws the team of writers used the last plot device that was possibly open to them. They would have the Fonz use his trusty Triumph to jump a shark in a tank.

“Jumping the shark” henceforth is colloquially known as the dreaded moment where the ideas run out and one turns to the realm of the absurd to continue the franchise.