We have a bathroom and a shower room, so we are each able to colonise one and have our own reading material.  The bathroom has Argos catalogues, Good Housekeeping and the Saturday colour mags from the papers; the shower room has - well - work it out for yourself.

Hehe.

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2003 ST1300 Pan Euro
1995 Yam XT600E
http://goingfastgettingnowhere.blogspot.com/

Today: concept bikes. They get trotted out every year, and every year I think...what is the point? I can't think of any, off the top of my head, that have made it to production in anything like the shape of the original concept (although the original Suzuki Katana sprins to mind, I'm not sure it was ever shown as a "concept").

Anyway, there they are, perfectly shaped for all manner of non-humanoid beings, dripping with impractical technology that noone ever puts on a road bike and with all the general charm and style of a baboon's big red hairy @rse. Is it a running joke between manufacturers, I wonder? Can there be another, more rational explanation for the likes of these...

The 1987 Suzuki Nuda, complete with suede-covered tailpiece.

The Kawasaki 2004 ZZR-X, made with real Lego. Note handlebars mounted under the tank, for maximum inconvenience.

Honda's 2005 DN-01 800cc automatic bike/scooter. Perfect for midgets with really, really long arms and no taste at all.

Yamaha's Luxair of 2007. Like a big gold canal boat with a wheel at each end.

They're not even the worst offenders, as they do at least look something like a motorcycle (however impractical), from the big 4. It takes privateers to do the truly ridiculous:

Like this. The Victory Vision of 2006. Apparently marrying the front end of a Mallard locomotive and the back end from a Peugeot Streetfight. Must be so much fun trying to see traffic, road signs, small buildings etc in front of you...

Does anyone ever look at these and say: if only they'd produce them, I'd buy one?

>> ex silens nox noctis <<

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I like my bikes to be the product of engineers, not French kitchen appliance designers (for anyone who remembers Starck's so-desperately pretentious Aprilia Moto' 6.5) or art-school doodles from people who watched Akira too many times. It's quite rare even for "automotive designers" to come up trumps - for every Suzuki Katana, there's a laugh-out-loud Morbidelli V8. Which I have to include, as I haven't chuckled at one for a while:

Nice. Who wouldn't be proud to have coughed up £100,000 (really!) for one of these...? Designed by Pininfarina, of all people.

I'll happily take the plastic - fairings are pretty useful, after all - but only if it's wrapped round something that works the way it should. And isn't so ugly that small children burst into tears at the sight of it.

Trick - you're right about the B-King starting life as a concept, and it kinda supports my point of "what is the point?". The "Boost-King" originally was so named because it used a supercharged Hayabusa engine, a 240-section rear tyre and had more built-in electronics than you could shake a stick at. Including fingerprint recognition ignition, built-in satnav and a million other innovations. That was 2001, and it was going to be a monster - when it was finally released as a proddie model in 2007, it had lost all of that, along with the more radical styling touches and become...well, a fairly ordinary UJM. Like every other manufacturer's big post-retro-naked offering, it simply took the standard top-of the-range big sports engine (the Hayabusa, in this case) and, as it's a Suzuki, added the three-way power switch (to emasculate it down to a 600, for anyone who wanted the kudos but couldn't handle the power) from the GSXR range. All the unique stuff that made the concept a hard-as-nails Mad Max road missile just vanished. Now it might as well be a Yamaha XJR1300, a Honda CB1300 or even a Suzuki GSX1400. But they did keep a similar look, to fool the punters...

Concept and production models, respectively. Sum total innovation: zero...it's just a styling exercise. Or what manufacturers, if they were being honest, would call a "new model" rather than a "concept"!

>> ex silens nox noctis <<

(Concept and production, respectively). The proddie version is distinguished by having 1670cc, producing a feeble sub-90 hp (although, to be fair, an eye-watering amount of torque). The uber-naked looks have been filled in, particularly with that hideous "Transformers - robots in disguise" face between the cylinders. The rear shock is now conventionally placed, but they hung on to the incredibly impractical exhausts...weird. In fact, despite the monstrous engine, it's basically not as good as a V-max. Buy it only if you need bragging rights on cubic capacity.

It came to my attention, in fact, when a work colleague announced he wanted to get back into biking (inexperienced rider, hung up his lid a number of years ago after falling off an Eliminator 400) and had decided the MT-01 was the way to go. And whilst I consider it a pretty underpowered old slug of a thing, anything that hefty and with that much torque is always going to be a bit of a handful for the unwary. My advice was forget it, look in the middleweight-ish streetbike bracket for the moment. He did actually paddle one around on a dealer forecourt, briefly...before leaving a deposit on a Yamaha Fazer (and was pleased as Punch about it, too - good for 'im)!

So there's the question - it's a bike that's pitched towards the experienced rider, but doesn't really compete at any level with anything else out there. So, ground-breaking trailblazer, or naff white elephant? You decide...

>> ex silens nox noctis <<

Something rather more down-to-earth today. It's been pictured in a number of places, most recently in a sort of purplish colour, but this baby is a hand-built project from somewhere in deepest Russia. No idea what the specs are, although it's obviously a bitsa wrapped around some sort of V8. But that, to me, is what a project bike should be - handmade in someone's shed, not the product of wads of cash being chucked at a specials builder to make something unique on the owner's behalf. It may be ugly (actually, I don't think there's much doubt on that) and crudely put together, but you gotta respect that the bloke actually built it at all. Presumably on a very tight budget, and without much regard for smoothing out welds! Anyway, I rather like it:

>> ex silens nox noctis <<

As ever, in the niche world of themed specials builders, the entire spectrum of quality and competency is represented, from the Track T800 production model:

- which is quite reminiscent of the Suzuki V-Strom in looks - to this, erm, whatever-it-is:

...which has a 2bhp motor and a working winch (!) and is apparently completely rideable.

I don't know that it fills me with the urge to strap a Citroen engine to my busted TDM, but it is quite a fascinating site. Nice to know that innovation is out there, even if some it very closely resembles an evolutionary dead-end.

>> ex silens nox noctis <<