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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Before the eighties had fully taken hold of the aesthetic; long before the availability of factory specced adventure tourers; before bloat-tanked Ténérés had littered the byways of Europe and beyond; before superbikes with full fairings and colourways like toothpaste brands — there was the one pot thumper.

And the most resonant expression of this simple design was the Yamaha XT500.

The launch of the XT500 was a bold punt on the part of Yamaha — who had responded to the American thirst for a simple, rigged and reliable long distance trail bike by producing the four stroke, 500cc single.

Though at the time these burbling simpletons were generally considered to be past their sell-by date — Yamaha innovated by using lightweight materials such as magnesium for the crank case and aluminium for the fuel tank. There was also a newly designed cradle frame as well as an integral oil tank.

When you threw these elements into the mix the XT’s slim, rugged frame was more than able to deal with the thumping up-and-down vibration of the single cylinder. A few years after its initial appearance in 1975, the bike eventually caught the imagination of riders in the European market like wildfire.

The XT won the first two places in the inaugural Paris-Dakar Rally in 1979 and then placed in all the top four spots in the 1980 event. A new generation of fans with a passion for adventure motorcycling was born all over Europe– and the team colours to which they aspired was the sky blue of the Yamaha team.

Yamaha’s soon-to-be-ubiquitous Ténéré brand grew out of the XT500 — and would become synonymous with the word adventure among European motorcycle fans in the years to come.

There’s a simple rawness to the Paris-Dakar specced version of the XT (above) — and this rawness is reflected in the video below.

Makes you want to dump the Tom Tom and head out into the wilderness.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The eighties in bike culture was a story of Japanese dominance and technical innovation. European brands suffered greatly from the explosion in popularity of fast, reliable and colourful machines coming out of the far east, which were rooted in high tech engineering.

The cheapness and accessibility of Jap machines meant a whole new generation in Europe and America was able to get on their bikes — and the proliferation and broadening of choice made biking a much more colourful proposition than it had been in previous decades.

For the first time in the eighties, buying into bike culture wasn’t about just being a generic, leather clad ‘biker’. It was about being the sort of biker you wanted to be.

1964: Boyhood dreams of Grease, rock & denim.

In my dreams I was a British Biker. I was a mod-baiting, leather wearing fetishist of all things American. That was the look anyway. But it was only English Iron that would do for my ride. Clip on bars. Pegs way back. Buffed steel tank. In my mind I nicked a featherbed frame from a greaser mate and bolted the Bonneville engine and I was away. Brilliant. The new roads of boom time Britain had me burning from caff-to-caff, round the gyratory and back again. Ton up to the bass string notes of Eddie Cochrane. That was the life in Levis and leather. Transatlantic exchange meant everything to me. In my imagination at least.

1975: Fizzy — first flights of Freedom

Then I came to consciousness. Reality check. Kenny Roberts was the hero. Forget Sheene. You could squeeze so much power and speed and noise out of the Yamaha FSIE’s 50 ccs. So it seemed to me anyway. I had a Roberts replica complete with wasp-like yellow and black paintjob. The boom time was over and there were power cuts and the three-day working week. Our estate was seething and humming and buzzing with the sound of my mates and their fizzies and the smell of two stroke and the heavy riffs of Metal. The dole money was enough to keep her going. They’re cool again now — icons of sustainability, apparently. For us, they were icons of the future.

image: thanks to Shane@ FS1E.net

1985: RDLC Powerbands and driving bans
The miner’s strike was over before it started. And we had scored our first licence. We never cared about politics, anyway. We were more interested in powerbands. And Elsie had a serious powerband. She kicked in hard and it was all you did to keep her lit and in the straight line. Elsie was all about first shunts, broken bones and first loves. If you tried to ride her like a fizzy you were doomed. And we were doomed alright. There was a certain feeling to the Elsie on the roads above the moors, and we were convinced it was all about the liquid.

1990s Kawasaki Ninja 600: knee dragging in middle age
By the mid nineties, you’d fallen out of love and back into lust with two wheels. The Ninja was the thing that did it. Elsie had proven too hard to live with, too riotous to handle. You had to get a job and get into four wheels. You first saw them on the road in Southern France. Well-off French kids in toothpaste leather scraping their knees in the borderlands up in the Pyrenees. All of a sudden everyone was riding sports bikes and I was a flash of green, with that slightly camp pink type on the rear. I left the Yam kink way behind. And the speed. It was the first time I’d travelled significantly over the Ton, a guilty secret which had inspired us all in the first place, but when you did it on the M1 you felt the breath of the grim reaper too keenly down the back of your neck.

2010: Back to the Future
I am a British biker. I am a Prius-baiting, Belstaff wearing, fetishist of all things British. Now it’s the clothing as well as the bike. I’ve paid Triumph and they’ve given me a recreation of the bike I dreamt of and I am away. The roads may be clogged, but I can bypass all that on the weekend. I get up early on a summer Sunday and I am back to those dreams of my youth. But now they are real. I avoid the Ace Café and all that retro nonsense. There’s nothing retro and ‘fashion’ about English-bred speed. All I need to do is twist my grip and I leave the last forty years behind. And it feels good.

Image: Deus Ex Machina

Words: Barney Morgan

BMW HP2 Megamoto

Why? One of the first signs that BMW had loosened its tie and started drinking in the morning. Powered by a highly tuned version of the fuel-injected, 1170cc, 8-valve Boxer engine, it is the most playful BMW ever built. Well, I say playful, playful like sporting a lamb chop waistcoat and having a game of ‘Hide and Seek’ with a grizzly bear.

+ It is a BMW the Batman would ride

– Short tank range. Loves expensive petrol

Suzuki GSX1100EFE

Why? It’s a dumb as a rock-chewing dog but it’s unlikely there’s been a sturdier motorcycle ever built. JCB could paint one yellow and use it in quarries. The engine is predecessor of the mighty GSX-R1100, but this bike has no fussy fairing to complicate or beautify. Cormac McCarthy’s Road will be patrolled by GSX1100s.

+ Simple, brutal and tougher than a herring gull

– Most have been turned into hideous drag bikes

Bimota SB2

Why? From the days when a tiny Italian firm, more used to making industrial heating and ventilation ducts, created the most advanced road bike the world had ever seen. Motive power is supplied by a tuned Suzuki GS750 motor. It’s also Massimo ‘916’ Tamburini’s first masterpiece.

+ The frame unbolts and splits in two for engine removal.

– Only 140 were ever built

Triumph Speed Triple T309

Why? The very first Hinckley Triumphs didn’t set the blood pumping. Reliable. Bulletproof. British. Yes, yes, yes, but a bit briar pipe for a 20-year-old. Until 1994’s Speed Triple T309. It’s a high watermark in motorcycle minimalism. Subsequent Speed Triples have all been technically better but didn’t capture the imagination in the same way.

+ Built to last. And British.

– It’s a pensioner magnet. ‘I used to ‘ave a Triumph…’

Penton 125 Six Day

Why? There’s something about these early-1970s dirt bikes that is just so right. The metal tank, yellow number boards, tiny drum brake and radial-fin heads. Of course, I could’ve chosen a Husqvarna 400, but this tiddler is close to perfect. These early bikes were produced by KTM for American company set up by enduro rider John Penton.

+ Weighs the same as loaf of bread, but climbs like an ibex

– A modern washing machine has more torque

Honda ST70 Dax

Why? Yes, its cousin, the C90, is the best-seller of all-time, but the Dax has fold-up bars so you can easily more store it on your yacht. What do you mean you haven’t got a yacht? You’ve got a Dax though, right?

+ Named Dax due to its similarity to the dachshund

– Doesn’t come with a free yacht.

Suzuki GSX-R1000 K5

Why? Every now and then the Japanese build a bike that so stunning lorry drivers stop owners and demand to lick their headlights. But, due to their relentless new product timescales the Japanese forced on the market, replace it in two years, and chuck away what made it so gorgeous. Yamaha did it with the R1 of ’02, and Suzuki did just the same in 2005.

+ The ultimate disposable Japanese hyperbike

- Blue and white can clash with your leathers

Scott TT Replica

Why? Between-the-wars, two-stroke racer for the road. The earlier Flying Squirrel is more famous, but the TT is the one I’d have. Long-stroke engine, fishtail exhausts and sturdy Scott front forks. And it’s liquid-cooled. The Japanese didn’t get to grips with that until the 1970s.

+ Pokey, even 70 years later

- Not named after a gliding rodent

Wood Yamaha YZ450

Why? A pure competition bike made in small numbers in Costa Mesa, California. This chro-mo framed beauty is built to compete in dirt track races on the short ovals of the Mid-West. It is as pared-down as an HB pencil. Everything fit perfectly, and has a purpose. It is the purest distilled essence of a racing motorcycle on the planet.

+ Absolute minimalism

- Not much good for touring the Alps

Indian Scout

Why? Like the majority of, but not all, the bikes in the list it was built to last. They left the factory a few years after The Great War and some, still 90% original, are still earning their keep on the various Walls of Death around the world. The other reason I love them is for their left-hand throttle, swapped to allow Patrolman to ride and shoot at the same time.

+ The tooled-up vigilante’s ideal ride.

- Unless the bad guys are in anything faster than an Austin 7

This is an extraordinary time for motorcycling and an extraordinary time to be a motorcyclist. The horizon has shifted and a new era of automation has arrived – where the once raw, mechanical simplicity of a bike (two wheels, engine, seat) has transformed into the digitised sci-fi hypercycles of today (two wheels, computer, engine, computer, seat, sensors, computer…). But of this year, in particular…

The trickle-down of race-bred technology, developed by genius racers like Valentino Rossi, is less of trickle now and more of an ever-widening hole in the dam of technical progression, pouring its way from racetrack to showroom by the following year. (Although, that dam is being rapidly plugged by accountants’ fingers and exponentially restrictive emission regulations. But that’s another story.)

Now most bikes feature some form of calming technology that allow you to change engine characteristics via different fuel maps. Many bikes feature some form of ABS now, ranging from simple wheel-speed sensors to slightly more complicated systems. This isn’t new anymore. However it gets better and better and, after this year, will no longer be a dirty word among biking purists. And traction control has been talked a lot, but makers of true sportsbikes are reluctant to embrace the technology in their production bikes. Yet no rider can watch Casey Stoner barrelling into a corner during a MotoGP race, pinning the throttle wide open, his faith fully in the Ducati traction control, and not want a piece of that. Let’s face it, the average weekend warrior can’t get anywhere near the full power of his litre superbike, and all have had one of those terrifying moments where it’s scared the bejesus out of them, whether they’ll admit it or not.

Sportsbikes have developed to a point where we just don’t need anymore power; what we now need is a way to actually enjoy our bike and play with its potential within our own, different comfort zones. We want to pretend to be Stoner or Rossi.

This year the focus has shifted instead towards manufacturers whose bikes have always been great but regarded as niche machines, dominating niche genres, or luxury playthings, expensive and temperamental. It’s BMW and Ducati in the spotlight in 2010 – two companies unashamedly embracing the GP toys we want to play with.

BMW, known for making off-road battleships like the R1200 GS, have left bike journos aghast with the new 192bhp S1000RR supersports bike (read that again: 192bhp, in a 204kg machine!). It’s already being lauded as the best litre bike you can buy, and ride on the road. Part, if not most, of this is down to the kind of development you’d expect from BMW, once they decided to use their technical knowledge of building the best off-road bikes to develop a proper sportsbike. The engine is a vanguard of technical progression, and the chassis it sits in is a mathematical masterpiece. But what elevates the S1000RR above the Big Four’s offerings is its full-on ABS and traction control systems, integrated into an electronics package that’s so clever it probably updates your Facebook page when you get your knee down.

No other manufacturer has plunged so deep into this technology. They’ve jumped into the hole we expected Honda to fill. The BMW has four switchable modes: Rain, Sport, Race and Slick. The first two are all you need on the road; the latter two unleash more power and loosen off the safety systems a bit. And this is where the genius lies – unlike any of the existing, relatively crude traction control systems (Kawasaki’s new 1400GTR, Ducati’s 1098R…), the Beemer system not only measures throttle input, wheel spin, possibly sphincter dilation, but also lean angle. This is a first in a production bike. In Rain mode it will take over your ham-fisted throttle control once you lean past 38 degrees. Sport and Race mode give you 45 degrees to play with before it starts questioning what you’re doing with your right wrist. And Slick mode, obviously for when its shod in slicks and can lean further, goes to Rossi-mimicking 53 degrees. Clever stuff.

The biggest surprise of the year however, and the bike that sets a precedent – not only for the manufacturer and its future models but for everyone else – is the new Ducati Multistrada 1200. Here is a bike that raises the game significantly by creating four machines in one, not just four different engine characteristics. Actually, it’s 16 bikes in one, but I’ll get to that. This is the small Italian firm’s most important bike to date, at their own admission, and the bike that could change perceptions of Ducatis as being unreliable, agricultural, noisy track toys that need servicing every weekend.

The new ‘Strada joins a class of gadget festooned trailies, like the 2010 BMW R12000GS and the forthcoming Yamaha Tenere, but brings with it the technology to transform itself into a road bike, a tourer, an off-road mud plugger and a city bike. It also features four mode settings, flickable at the handlebar, but these settings alter the suspension set-up, as well as the power delivery and ABS sensitivity. It truly is a remarkable piece of kit, for so many reasons.

The fact Ducati have increased the engine mileage before servicing instantly makes a Duke more affordable and more attractive. And you can expect all the developments on this bike to make their way to other Ducati models very soon. But the fact you can flick between the perfect city bike – softer suspension for potholes, tempered throttle response, highly sensitive ABS – to a full-power Sport mode – taut suspension, all 150bhp, medium ABS sensitivity – is a revelation. Want to head off up that firetrail? Hit Enduro mode and the ABS drops to well-relaxed, the suspension extends and the power switches to one of three power curves.

And it’s all tweakable, so you can choose full 150bhp off-road if you plan on doing the Dakar, or not. In fact, each of the four modes allows you to also select solo or pillion, with or without luggage, making sixteen factory suspension settings, all of which you can programme into your four modes. If you’re not happy with Ducati’s chosen parameters, you have 31 damping settings to play with on the forks and 16 degrees of rebound on the rear shock.

The £10,995 base model doesn’t feature the electronic suspension, and the ABS is a £700 option. The four modes alter engine mapping only. But most UK deposits have been put down on the full-featured £14,295 S Touring model or S Sport model. The Touring comes with panniers, heated grips and a centre stand while the Sport gets carbon fibre trinkets.

I’d buy one based on looks alone, but this underlying controllable schizophrenic nature is the future, and I find it very exciting. Although, I probably shouldn’t at the moment: I now have to go outside and deal with my Audi, which is currently switching its lights on and opening the windows when it fancies, after getting rainwater into its Comfort Control Module a few weeks ago.

Hmmmm

Japanese invention of the year: Yamaha’s cross-plane crankshaft
Bang 270º bang 180º bang 90º bang 180º

If Japan has been known for one thing when it comes to cars and motorbikes, it is innovation. This year, Yamaha’s cross-plane crank engine, which appears in their R1 Superbike is sure to make some (asymmetrical) waves.

It’s going to be a good year for Japanese inventiveness. We’ve got Showa’s Big Piston Fork (fitted to the Suzuki GSX-R1000K9 and Kawasaki ZX-6R); Honda’s electronic braking for the CBR6 and Blade; and Yamaha’s ‘just like Rossi’ cross-plane crank. If you want useful, the Honda brakes are the easy winner. Trouble is, they’re so clever you don’t know they’re working. Same goes for the new Showa forks, unless you’re braking hard into a bend.

But you can’t ignore the R1’s new crank. It looks different, it feels different, and boy does it sound different. Although Yamaha patented a cross-plane crank in the 1960s, this one dates back to 2003. They’d just tempted Valentino Rossi away from Honda, and they needed something special to turn their dog of an M1 into a MotoGP winner. Of four experimental ‘growler’ engines at the Sepang winter test, one stood out.

At the time most commentators called it the ‘Big Bang’ engine. We now know that a better description might be ‘Big Grip’. That’s what Yamaha are claiming, at any rate.

So what’s so great about uneven firing pulses? They are certainly nothing new. For more than 100 years singles, V-twins and some parallel twins and triples have delivered uneven pulses to the rear wheel, while fours have stayed regular. But the last 20 years have seen a growing consensus (first in 500s, now in MotoGP) that uneven firing intervals are superior.

The traditional explanation is that an engine with an irregular beat gives the rear tyre more time to recover between pulses, so the rider can use more throttle before it spins up. But if you cluster all the pulses together, who’s to say they won’t make the tyre let go more easily? With the new R1, Yamaha offer a more credible reason. They say their system creates a more direct feel for the rider between throttle and rear tyre. And it does that by stripping out the undesirable ‘momentum effect’ of a traditional four-cylinder crankshaft.

To get your head around this idea, think about what an engine actually deals out to the rear wheel. Firstly, it transmits the combustion force. Open the throttle, the engine gulps more fuel and air, the burn does its thing, and you get a bigger ‘whomp’ acting on the tops of the pistons. Simple and controllable. But there’s also a secondary effect. As a conventional four-cylinder crankshaft rotates, it creates a stop-start signature. All four pistons (and their crank web balancing weights) reach their highest and lowest speeds at the same time. Yamaha call this ‘inertial torque’, and describe it rising and falling in a sine wave.

This fluttering, say Yamaha, gets in the way of you feeling what’s going on. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Enter the crossplane crankshaft. Viewed from one end, there’s a crankpin every 90 degrees (north, south, east and west). So as the crank spins there are always two pistons going flat out when the other two are stopped. The inherent architecture of Ducatis creates the same effect.

Is it really any use? In MotoGP, it’s contributed to three world titles in five years. On the road, the advantage isn’t so clear, unless you yearn to own a straight four that sounds like a Vee. The 2009 R1 is a peaky beast, and low-speed running is – well, lumpy. The Suzuki and Honda rivals are tough competition, too. We’ll have to wait for hot summer tarmac to know for sure.

Doh. What is a crankshaft again? A crankshaft is just a device that turns up-and-down motion into round-and-round – for example, the pedals on a bicycle. Naturally, the pedals are spaced opposite each other, so that one of your legs is pushing when the other one can’t. Most four-cylinder engines use the same principle: the pistons (the things that transmit the ‘shove’ derived from burning fuel and air in a confined space) rise and fall in pairs. Because an individual cylinder only fires once every two revolutions, the crankshaft as a whole receives a one-cylinder pulse of power once every half revolution, or 180 degrees. Yamaha’s new crossplane crankshaft is different. There’s no direct comparison with a bicycle because the bike has four pistons, and you’ve only got two legs. But imagine the angle between your pedal cranks being something like 100 degrees, rather than 180. It would feel horrible. But the R1 revs 200 times faster than your legs, so it’s not bothered.

The stunning R1 is not the only Yamaha motorcycle to have occupied the cutting edge of design innovation. Over the last 30 years the company has pioneered more things that worked than any other Japanese corporation.

by Rupert Paul