Posts Tagged ‘Motorbikes’

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Friday Bike Crush # 4

Friday, October 14th, 2011

Every now and then the distin­guished folk at RM Auctions come up with a doozy we can’t ignore.

We spotted this 1953 Maserati bike in the auction list for their forth­coming London event (26th October) and we had to share.

This is appar­ently one of the earliest motor­cycles to wear the trident badge — and was the product of a time just after the company had acquired the Bologna-​​based motor­cycle manufac­turer Italmoto. Maser then shifted production to their home in Modena.

Despite the lovely detailing of the bikes they made, like that on this little 125 single, the company only made two wheelers until 1960 — by which time the big Italian manufac­turers had made compet­ition very stiff indeed.

Lovely fodder for some weekend daydreaming…

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Auto-hell #101

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Looking like a cross between a mobility scooter, a Sinclair C5 and a JD Bug, the Honda Zook (otherwise known as the MS50L) looked like a deathtrap, and must have ridden like one.

Released in 1990, it came with a fold-​​up steering column and seat post, presumably for parking in tiny Japanese city spaces. It was, we assume, aimed at students and the very naïve, with the rather loathsome candy-​​coloured marketing campaign featuring the Japanese prede­cessor of that annoying bloke from the Halifax ads.

It had a two litre fuel tank and could appar­ently top 33 MPH with a prevailing wind. Not a patch on the earlier, ruggedly cool Motra. But inter­esting nonetheless. Not surprising it was a bit of a dead end, and if you can find one we suggest you burn it. From an aesthetic point of view it makes the eyes hurt.

And we are Honda fans!

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Joey Dunlop, Isle of Man , 1983

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

We’re loving this onboard from Joey Dunlop around the Isle of Man in 1983. But as well as the always amazing images of Joey ‘keeping it lit and between the hedges’, here is the brilliantly cool, calm and under­stated Ulster tones of yer maun himself.

Stay with this footage for some hilarious repartée between Joey and the journ­alist as he sits, gobsmacked, while Joey comments on how ‘careful’ you have to be through this or that particular section.

Really inspiring stuff from the man who walked the walk and never bothered to talk the talk too much.

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SR 500: Poetry in motion

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

More creative niceness from California here, namely Long Beach’s Lossa Engineering.

There’s a real sense of drama to this short by Ricki Bedenbaugh. The beautiful noise of the big single and the orches­tration of the soundtrack is cut together in a lovely urban rhythm.

This film has a particular piquancy, because an older cousin of ours had set our adolescent bike fantasies alight when he bought one of these big, booming singles and taunted us with his rocker cool (which didn’t seem that cool at the time).

Cuz would take the merciless mickey out of us as we watched him roar past, us slouched bored on our Raleigh Grifters.

Though he was swathed in patched denim, monkey boots and the ubiquitous RUSH t-​​shirt, and we were all about disco, boogie and Lambrettas, it was secretly the sound of the SR500 that I would ape by tucking the mudguard end over the Grifter’s rear knobbly.

The guys in Long Beach have certainly made this a much cooler bike than it ever was in its original form.

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When two worlds collide...

Monday, August 1st, 2011

We’re not sure if there is any concrete connection between bike and skate culture.

Both share the fixation on rolling through the landscape, but, of course, with vastly different emphasis.

But in California — that melting plot of all things faddish and nex gen — there is now and then something unlikely peeps through the cultural meniscus — something that fuses what was always so seperate.

This pleasant little video records a snippet of a day in the life of a skate­boarder and Harley rider.

An inter­esting little muse on the beauty of metal­flaked hogs and skating through that distinctive Californian light.

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The Ubiquity of Belstaff

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Now we kind of dig the whole Belstaff thing. Because over all other ways of wearing motor­cycle gear, the classic lines of the brand’s products are probably the least offensive.

You can ride a motorbike in a Belstaff, be protected and warm and still drop into the caff or the pub, or even a business meeting, without appearing to be a twisted fetishist.

Belstaff’s fashion/​ crossover appeal has been getting up our noses of late. All things Belstaff seem to become more ubiquitous with every fashionable season — with strange, crimply textures and offbeat colourways showing up in the trendier fashion outlets.

We doubt their sponsorship of the McGregor/​Boorman blagfest will do them any favours either, in the long term.

More than any of this, though, there’s something about the hard, soulless stares of the models in the ads, something about the recuper­ation of biker style into the icono­graphy of High Street fashion that leaves a funny taste in the mouth.

Come on Belstaff. Go back to your roots.

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Guy Martin Onboard

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

image via TT3D

Ok, so we know the TT was a couple of weeks back and that we all know, at least intel­lec­tually, how mad TT riders really have to be.

But: we’ve never seen anything that etches out the sublime and lightning quick inter­action of bike, body and mind that is needed to thread a compet­itive lap around the Isle of Man than the footage in the onboard video below.

The lap commentary by onboard rider and record-​​breaking mentalist Guy Martin sets off the incredible sequence perfectly — and what emerges that the man himself appears amazed that he can actually do the things that is evidenced by the video he shot.

The TT3D film was damn good. But there’s something in the rawness of this footage combined with Guy’s voiceover that transcends that totally.

Talk all through the video is of how calib­rated to this sort of high tempo effort the rider’s brain becomes through practice during TT week: and there is a barely disguised and totally refreshing sense of awe at the challenges he has faced.

Great to see and brilliant to hear.

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