Intermot .04

Intermot .04

Bikes, bikes and more bikes!

KEVIN CAMERON

I LOVE THE MUNICH SHOW. IT TAKES DAYS TO SEE everything, from new models and MotoGP bikes down to all the fascinating little outfits making pistons or exploding safety vests. Evening brings a grand reward of food and beer, often in distinguished company.

The first day is press day, hurrying from one thunderous, excitement-laden new-model show to another, hastily scribbling the essentials in a little notebook while fumbling for a business card to trade for a press kit.

The Japanese majors send their message of excitement through a contest of loud and corny commercial pantomimes, There we sit in a darkened auditorium, wondering what this crashing, thudding music has to do with new models. Now, the ripping Doppler of unseen sportbikes passing at in potty-helmet and shades. Way cool. Ugh, nobody warmed-up the engine. The overhead spotlights intended '■ to transform chrome and paint into jewels beyond price instead turn the exhaust into cosmic blue-and~pink smog.

Motivational researchers must have told these compam.e to `give industry a human face!" Obedient to this concept, a big screen flashes the magnified image of a Japanese engineer-tumed~goodwi1I ambassador. He, actually dream ing of something familiar to eat, tells us of his company's unceasing dream of~'super-fine drive feeling." Pure new model excitement.

A mellow Mel Allen voice-over skips disconnectedly down the features list as more new models roll out, each adding to the inversion layer. Looks like not too much new here, but the place is too packed for a rush to the door. I can play along-the hors d'oevres were good. and it's all in the press kit anyway. But what would be wrong with hav ing professionals just telling us the goals they set for their new models, and how these goals were reached?

Now Piaggio: is this a new-model intro or an investment seminar? Men in suits are explaining how motorbikes fit with real estate and hotels. And who's bought Moto Guzzi? Both Piaggio and Ducati claim to have deals. Never mind, I’m going to look at bikes.

At the KTM pavilion, everything is orange but the pale, origami-like Venom half-naked (with “clothes” and lower handlebars it becomes the RC8 Superbike). Its muffler is concealed within a streamlined “lifeboat” of curvy aluminum, slung beneath the engine. Both header pipes disappear straight down into it, finally exiting on the right. I marvel at the tall and ungainly Africa rally bike-an armored personnel carrier for one. A Greek colleague waves his arm all-inclusively and notes, “Very littie is new. No one can afford novelties. Everyone needs the money to meet Euro-3 emissions standards next year.”

It fit. As I prowl the 10 giant hangars that house the show, I see mostly makeovers and eclectic mixtures of styling elements. Motorcycle styling has become as tutti fratti as current architecture, w mixes brick arches and Cape Cod dormers atop 20-story office blocks. Is it stylistic bankruptcy? Is it a witty joke that I don’t get? The Supermoto look-tall and leggy-is one new element among the jagged darts, flat planes and fake intakes seen over the past two years. Another new element-seen on Benelli’s naked TnT and MV Agusta’s Brutale Mamba-is what I call the “visual maze.” The dense swirl of exhaust pipes, coolant hoses, frame tubes and waterpump “snail” has become a style in itself on European naked/semi-naked bikes. This is fun because it exploits visually what has to be there anyway. European automakers did this with their under-hood space “environment” more than 10 years ago, converting what had been a dark mess into a clean diagram of function. I like it.

As I push through the crowd at KTM, I overhear a snatch of conversation: “Regarding this four-cylinder, there is total silence.” They are talking about the 220-bhp MotoGP VFour recently tested in the KR/Proton. CWpulled strings to wangle a quick trip to nearby KTM for a look, but no cigar.

At Moto Guzzi (whose money paid for this display?), 1 again admire the graceful MGS-01, of which 50 are now promised for November. As in '02, it wears slicks. The Ghezzi-Brian “Fionda” explores yet another way in which to package the venerable V-Twin. A complex and interesting chassis, carbon-fiber valve covers, a “torpedo bomber” under-engine muffler and vertically stacked headlights are but a few of its elements. At MZ, more makeovers-shapes like calcite crystals, with stepped layers of edges and extra planes. An alien spacecraft? Angular sheet-metal flourishes adorn the radiator and oil cooler, and the headlights hang in a “style unit,” cantilevered ahead of the fork. Verdict? Another normal motorcycle under a pile of style.

The 50cc scooter and small motorcycle lives, and not just in China but in Europe as weil. I see dozens of makes and models. Miniature Supermoto, sportbike, fat-tank cruiser and “style” 50s provide basic transport in the flavor of your choice-sometimes quite clever. Four years ago, the Chinese manufacturer booths were small and amateurish. Two years ago, their products were just beginning to overflow the basic-transportation category. Today, the news photos of fashionably dressed, obviously prosperous Chinese citydwellers, cellphones to their ears, suggest that all their products-motorcycles and autos included-will spill out into world markets in sophisticated profusion.

Korea makes cars. Where are the Korean bikes? The Hyosung “Aquila” 650 is a fair scaled-down Oriental rendition of Harley-Davidson’s V-Rod. The Orient can now make anything it wants. Now, it must choose what to make.

BMW has had great success liberating Europe’s officebound middle class with the illusion that Dakar styling and a multitude of suspension joints can beam the rider to untracked wastes. Can Supermoto and dirt-track lookalikes find similar favor? Among the most striking is Derbi’s Mulhacen 659, with slab-sided, MotoGP-inspired sheetaluminum swingarm, sawtooth front brake disc and unique, reverse-curvature radiator. Honda’s FMX 650 travels the same road-but not to the U.S. Sachs’s delightfully named “MadAss” is a minimalist, fuel-in-frame design study fit to follow its “Beast” of ’02. Add Aprilia’s potentially very powerful 450ec V-Twin and Husqvama’s painfully sharpand-stylish SM6IO "Urban Supermoto." Globalization has blown the out-of-business Cannondale enduro to Taiwan, where Dinli Metal Industrial will do what with it? We are not told.

Speaking further of BMW why did engineers load the KI200S sportbike with attractive Formula-One-inspired performance features, then lay its cylinders almost horizon tal, forcing adoption of a giant wheelbase? I'm thinking about it.

Embodying the metal dinette set look of the 1950s is the curious half-bike, half-scooter SYM Babieca. A reluctant model in a modest metalfiake bikini mak~s faces at her manager's attempts to get her to slinkily caress the strange Taiwanese machine for photographers.

Is there a middle ground between bike and scooter-a "comfort zone" of biggish wheels, storage space and 250500cc four-stroke engines? There is plenty of trying: the giant Malaguti. Kymco Xciting 500 (dohc with four valves), Gilera Nexus and others with openly sportbike style features. Everything becomes everything else. Run up the flag and see who enlists.

Somewhere at each of the majors' pavilions is a MotoGP bike, Kawasaki's ZX-RR is very Superbike-like but breaks new ground in blending the long fairing bellypan into the smoothly shaped swingarm and equally streamlined "chainguard" under the rear sprocket. The placard claims a middle-of-the road 220 Ps (217 bhp) at 14500 rpm.

Great news for the 1 00-inch S&S stroker-motor set: a Bangkok outfit called Vee Rubber shows a 360mm-wide rear tire, two-thirds of the way to being a big, black beachball.

Bimota has arisen yet again, showing its Suzuki IL I000R-powered SB8K Santamonica, which sports car bon-composite uprights bearing the swingarm. devising into twin aluminum chassis beams. The Italians like con trasting materials. Witness the MV Agusta, the forward chassis of which is of trellis construction, the uprights alu minum. An extreme is the Bimota DB5, the swingarm of which begins as a Mike Uailwood Replica-like swirl of steel tubing, only to bolt to machined-aluminum axle carri ers. Its chassis beams are a red cat's cradle of steel-tube bends, bolting to CNCed alloy uprights. The no-fork Tesi is back as the naked `2D," with an air-cooled Ducati engine and a thrusting, left-of-center carbon snorkel airbox slashed new styling and engineering path ways, showing timid majors that it's safe to trodden (and I 19-year-old) path. Long may it do so.

Back to Benclli. whose 900 Triple has been inflated to power the TnT. Its 69 cubic inches (88 x 62mm equals 1131cc) are claimed to spew forth 135 bhp at 9500 rpm. This is a big, tall engine. Cooling has moved out from beneath the seat (it remains there on the 898cc Tornado) to become a pair of "lobster-claw" side radiators in pods ahead of the rider's knees. Motocross-style tapered bars give a sittip riding position. Not rad enough? Sashay over to Benelli's Carbon Flow, a criss-crossing of large multi-beam carbon chassis and cooling/intake duct in one. After John Britten, who can resist playing with a material of carbon's fabulous stiffness-to-weight ratio? Benelli made this in a nine-piece mold in collaboration with an outfit called GERG.

The 998cc MV F4 "Tamburini'~ is very beautiful. One detail I enjoy especially: Instead of the cheesy gerbil screen other makers put over air intakes, this one has the same dignified brass mesh that used to keep stones out of Italian four-shoe rac{i~j fum brakes of the 1960s. In a little case, the com pany displays its dual-length tuned intake system, similar to that used on final-generation Honda RC45 Superbikes. A pneumatic motor lowers a set of intake extensions against the four throttle bodies, boosting torque in a particular mm band.

Ducati's MotoGP Dl 6 has special rectangular receivers in its chassis, intended to allow engine position to be experi-. mentally altered. At the company's informational meeting, we hear about the Multistrada 620 and 620 Dark-"entry-. level" additions. Coming in the last quarter of `05 is the Sportclassic Paul Smart I000DS. Paul did a great thing for Ducati in winning the 1972 Imola 200, and Ducati knows it!

One night we had dinner with Ducati chief designer Pierre Terbianche and product development manager Dan Van Epps. Pierre turned to me and asked, `How long has it been since you were impressed with new technology on a GP bike?" As I thought about it, the pause became embar rassin~. There," he said. "your silence says it all."

It's true, It's too easy to confuse the waythings are with the way they ought to be. Great shows like this one not only pursue obvious commercial goals, they also bring Jots of people and their ideas together. I'm looking forward to next time.