It is curious that we don’t see more customs based on the Suzuki SV650 motorcycle.
There are no shortages of the middleweight-twin in the used market, the bike has good bones with what is becoming an iconic motor, and the platform is well-suited to a variety of purposes.
Take for instance here the Stoker STR SV650, which we spotted on Bike EXIF, as it is an attractive flat-tracking custom from Finish builder Antti Eloheimo.
The Yamaha MT-09 isn’t considered one of the more beautiful motorcycles on the market, but thankfully the three-cylinder street bike is offered in a more palpable café racer version, the Yamaha XSR900.
This is where we begin today’s story too, thanks to Yamaha’s Yard Built program, which encourages tuners and designers to take their hands to these affordable machines, and restyle them into something new and beautiful.
With that, we see the work of David Sánchez from Bottpower with his XR9 Carbona build, which will also be available as a body kit for those who are looking to spice up the looks of the Yamaha XSR900 sitting in their garage.
That Harley-Davidson has been working on a small-displacement motorcycle for street rider is not a well-kept secret.
The project involves a collaboration with Chinese motorcycle manufacturer Qianjiang Motors, but the fruits of that labor have been slow to reveal themselves.
Like many of Harley-Davidson’s planned future models, the alleged “XR338” is at best MIA, and at worst DOA.
No one seems to know the next move from Harley-Davidson, including the Bar & Shield brand itself, which has been extremely terse about the details of its “Hardwire” business plan.
To help nudge them along the way, A&R contributor Michael Uhlarik has been working with Italian design show Engines Engineering (E&E) on an XR338 flat track concept for the street.
It is here, finally. The Indian FTR1200 is arriving in dealerships in the next few weeks, which means that the motorcycle press can finally hop on this street tracker and talk about it.
But, we have already done that. Asphalt & Rubber was one of a few publications that got to ride a prototype of this machine back in October 2018, and since then we have seen countless outlets and social media darlings swing a leg over the Indian FTR1200.
Furthermore, racers already have the bike in their garages and are competing in the Super Hooligan National Championship series, and while the press launch for this bike was underway in Mexico, other outlets were busy getting exclusive tastes of the machine, including A&R.
So, while we are very excited to be the first to tell you how the new Indian FTR1200 does the business, this is very much a machine that has been in the sphere for quite a while, and thus is already a known quantity.
We didn’t let the hold us back too much, and I can confidently say that no other publication has spent more time in the saddle of the Indian FTR1200 S than us, getting to know every bit of this new motorcycle and where it takes the Indian Motorcycle brand. Let me explain.
Husqvarna is a sales-driven company. I know this because before our press ride, the (Austrian-owned) Swedish brand spent more time selling us on the company’s staggering sales growth rather than talking about the technical specifics on the new Husqvarna Svartpilen 701.
To that end, sales are good. Very good, in fact. For a point of reference, more Husqvarna motorcycles are being sold now than ever before in the brand’s extensive history, and some of that growth comes from the Husqvarna’s new entry into the street bike realm.
Don’t get me wrong, Husqvarna dirt bikes still out sell the brand’s street bikes by roughly 4:1 when we are talking raw numbers, but the revived company is knocking on close to 50,000 motorcycles sold a year now. That is impressive, no matter how you slice it.
The bike that they hope will push the brand over the 50k mark is the Husqvarna Svartpilen 701, which is the only new model from Husqvarna for the 2019 model year. The Svartpilen 701 is the counterpoint to the Vitpilen 701 that debuted last year, and it continues Husqvarna’s trend of releasing the mirror image machines in various sizes.
As such, the 701 series borrows its platform from the KTM 690 Duke, and its new single-cylinder engine that features dual balancing shafts (one at the crank, the other on the cam).
It is a motor we are quite fond of here at Asphalt & Rubber, so we were intrigued when Husqvarna invited us to Lisbon, Portugal to ride the new Svartpilen 701 – as we wanted to see if this motorcycle was just more than a re-skinned KTM.
The answer to that question is certainly a yes, but with an asterisk. Let me explain.
Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal as we come to our final destination on this three-week European press launch adventure. For this installment, we switch countries of origin, and get ready to hop on the Husqvarna Svartpilen 701 street bike.
A sort of street-tracker meets roadster type of bike, the Svartpilen 701 is a unique build from Husqvarna, and it pairs well with the company’s “white arrow” – the Vitpilen 701.
The plan is for us to get to know the Husqvarna Svartpilen 701 on the roads outside of Lisbon, riding along the coast for some twisties, touring along the highway, and doing some city miles in the urban jungle of Lisboa.
The route should give us a good idea of what to expect from the Swedish brand’s newest street bike, and to see if it is as fun as Husqvarna would like us to believe.
A few years ago, I had the fortune to hop on the Zaeta 530 SE for a quick romp. The eye-catching machine was stupid-fun, as it rattled just about every bone in my body. Beautiful, but completely unrefined, the lithe Zaeta was intriguing to me until I saw its $25,000 price tag. Ouch, on so many levels!
Too rich for my blood, too unpolished for my senses, but still very drool-worthy – the potential here was strong, and the small Italian brand was making strides on fixing some of the machine’s more troublesome gremlins.
The 528cc single-cylinder thumper (and it is a thumper!) is from TM Racing, a unique Italian brand in its own right, but the real highlight of the Zaeta was its CNC’d aluminum chassis, which was just gorgeous.
This made the 266 lbs machine a tough one to forget, so when I saw in my foreign news feed that the fearsome Zaeta was coming to the US for American Flat Track racing, I was quite excited…even more so when I saw that a twin-cylinder machine was also in the works.
A hometown favorite, a custom from Moto-Mucci caught our eye at this year’s One Motorcycle Show in Portland, and we thought you would like it too, so we snapped some photos of it.
The build starts off with a KTM 300 XC-W Six Days two-stroke dirt bike, and goes further by turning it into a rather fetching street tracker model.
When it comes to the Royal Enfield brand, I wouldn’t say that it is exactly on our radar. Filling a niche within a niche, Royal Enfield’s offerings seem quaint, but impractical to us…despite their affordable price tags. We just don’t have enough mechanical masochism to want one in our garage.
That all being said, our ears perked up this year at the EICMA show, with the debut of the Royal Enfield KX concept. Finally, there is something from this Indian company that appeals to our senses, and I personally hope they build it for production.
A retro-looking bobber with modern finishes, the Royal Enfield KX concept takes the perfect mixture of new and old that pleases us in a very specific way.
I had to go back and lookup when we first saw the Svartpilen 701 from Husqvarna, because even though it was only a year ago…that time seems like an eternity.
Maybe it is because of Husqvarna’s measured pace with its street bikes, maybe it is the design overlap between the 401 and 701 models, or maybe it is because we have wanted to see what this retro-modern flat tracker was going to look like after the lawyers had their way with it.
The answer is probably all of the above, but it doesn’t really matter. The 2019 Husqvarna Svartpilen 701 is ready for your two-wheeled consumption.
Today, I am going to share with you a look behind the curtain – a look at several sides of the motorcycle industry that you don’t usually get to see. Our story concerns the Indian FTR1200 street tracker motorcycle, which just debuted in Cologne, Germany at the INTERMOT show…but really, this story started three months ago, back in the United States.
It starts with a leaked photo of the Indian FTR1200, taken from a production event in Los Angeles, which was then sent to Asphalt & Rubber by a loyal reader. This turned into A&R finding its way to Minnesota to ride a prototype of the FTR1200, and us being amongst the first to ride this highly anticipated motorcycle.
An exclusive media event, Indian’s plan was to have the largest publication from each critical market present, to give an early evaluation of this ground-breaking machine for the American brand.
While there were sole-representatives from the UK, Italy, Germany, Australia, Asia, etc – because of our efforts, from the United States there would now be two publications. Sorry for partying.
I have no doubt that the coverage from these other publications will read like initial reviews, part critique and part marketing pieces for the Indian Motorcycle Company. That’s not a slight to my colleagues, that is just the reality of the situation. How do you evaluate a prototype motorcycle?
“I have no idea what they are talking about,” I told an Indian staff member, while our post-ride video reviews/debriefs were being filmed. We had just ridden for a half a day on a motorcycle that we knew nothing about, and now we were expected to stand in front of a camera, and espouse our impressions of it.
Because of the looming weather, our tech briefing was after the ride, which is a frustrating thing when it comes to evaluating a motorcycle. As such, our impressions would be limited and relative. The power felt “good”…the brakes were “ok”…this exhaust looks like the work of a drunk plumber.
With no specs, no prices, no production volumes, no set list of features…what were these journalists talking about in their videos? I still don’t know.At $9,000, the FTR1200 could be one of the best motorcycles on the market, but at $20,000 Indian would have clearly missed the mark.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the $13,000 / $15,000 price points for the base and S models, respectively. It feels high…but we will get to that in a minute.