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The New R1 Would Look Hot in Kenny Roberts Livery

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The 2006 Yamaha YZF-R1 LE livery, which was a yellow, black, and white homage to Kenny Roberts Sr., is perhaps the greatest livery ever to adorn an R1, straight from the Yamaha factory.

Whether you are a loyal subject of King Kenny, or you just enjoy the fetching, yet simple, racing design, the Roberts livery is a treasure to see in any form — but especially so at speed.

Giving us a glimpse as to what the 2015 Yamaha YZF-R1 would look like with such a limited edition paint scheme, Oberdan Bezzi has once again whet our appetite ahead of a weekend full of riding.

And for you Giacomo Agostini fans, there is something special waiting for you after the jump as well. Enjoy!

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Bikes

Honda Bulldog Concept Lets the Dogs Out in Osaka

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After first showing us the Honda SFA and Honda CRF250 Rally concepts, Big Red made good on its promise for another motorcycle concept premiere at the Osaka Motorcycle Show, debuting the Honda Bulldog concept.

With the face of a Ruckus, and built to “leisurely” take-on the great outdoors in an unassuming manor, the Honda Bulldog is a stout off-roader that adds a new slant to the term adventure-bike.

With wide 15″ knobby tires, a 28″ seat height, and 400cc parallel-twin engine mated to a six-speed gearbox, the Bulldog certainly isn’t what you expect to see bombing down the trails, yet it sorta makes sense.

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Bikes

Honda CRF250 Rally Concept Breaks Cover in Japan

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Adventure riders, you prayers have been answered. Honda is set to debut a new off-road model at the Osaka Motorcycle Show, the Honda CRF250 Rally.

Based off the Honda CRF250L platform, the Rally concept is basically the CRF250L with rally-styled bodywork.

The Honda CRF250 Rally concept will get its worldwide debut alongside the Honda True Adventure concept, which we first saw at last year’s EICMA show.

This makes for an interesting dichotomy, as the CRF250 Rally is set to look like the CRF450 Rally race bike, while the True Adventure (cough, Africa Twin, cough) borrows heavily from the race bike’s technology package.

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Bikes

Honda SFA Concept Gets Japanese Debut

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After it first debuted in Indonesia last October, the Honda SFA concept motorcycle seems to be getting serious, as Honda will be showing the up-market bike at this weekend’s Osaka Motorcycle Show and next weekend’s Tokyo Motorcycle Show.

While Honda only mentions that the SFA concept is a “street-fighter style light-weight motorcycle with a single cylinder engine mounted on a trellis frame,” sources in Indonesia say the fetching small-displacement machine is built around the 150cc CB150R for that market.

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Bikes

Moto Guzzi X-Rally 1200 Concept by Oberdan Bezzi

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Moto Guzzi would do well to add a scrambler model to its current lineup, and build off the hype generated by the Ducati Scrambler’s launch, not to mention the “post-authentic” movement (whatever that means) that seems to pull models out of the 1960’s and thrust them into the modern conversation.

Helping us imagine such a machine is Oberdan Bezzi, with his Moto Guzzi X-Rally 1200 concept. Maybe too heavy to appeal to die-hard off-roaders (I can hear the moans already in the comments section), but the X-Rally 1200 certainly fills the need for a brutish enduro with classic cues — not to mention, a break from the beaked-ADV status quo that the Stelvio tries so hard to chase.

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Bikes

Would You Buy This $280,000 Motorcycle?

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We have seen a lot of limited-run motorcycles here at Asphalt & Rubber — some have been intriguing, and some have been…well, not. With exclusivity of course comes a price tag of sizable proportions, but it is rare that we see a motorcycle break into six-figures, let alone pass the quarter-million dollar mark. But here we are with the Yacouba Feline.

We have featured the work of Yacouba Galle before, as the French designer has done a bit of work in the industry, including a bolt-on design kit for the MV Agusta Brutale, which he calls the Bestiale (a name that might make Anglophones cringe a little). Unlike the Bestiale though, the Feline is a full-on motorcycle, not just a kit…and if you like what you see, it is going to cost you a mint.

Only 50 examples of the Yacouba Feline will be built, whose lines following those of a panther, says Galle. At the heart of the machine is a three-cylinder, 800cc, 170hp engine of undisclosed origin (though we would wager from MV Agusta), and Galle says the final machine will tip the scales at 341 lbs.

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Bikes

“Scrambler Café Racer” Ducati Scrambler by Mr. Martini

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The third, and last, Ducati Scrambler concept from the Verona Motor Bike Expo, the “Scrambler Café Racer” by Mr. Martini is exactly what the name implies: a cafe racer styled scrambler motorcycle.

Mr. Martini appropriately added a high-mount exhaust to his “scrambler” and retained the Scrambler’s Pirelli knobby tires. The addition of a cafe racer fairing though is an interesting choice, and leaves this concept straddling the two staples of hipster motorbiking in the custom scene.

We’ll let you decided whether this doubles the “post-authentic” nature of the Scrambler, or if the work is just an overload of the self-ironic.

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Bikes

“Scratch” Ducati Scrambler by Officine Mermaid

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The second of three custom Ducati Scrambler designs unveiled at the Verona Motor Bike Show, “Scratch” by Officine Mermaid is perhaps closer in design to what we connote when thinking about a scrambler motorcycle, than say the design we first showed you by Deus Ex Machina.

Stripped down to only the bare essential pieces of metal, treated to look more rustic than its birth certificate implies, and complete with taped-over headlight, we have some “Grade A” hipster bait right here from Dario Mastroianni and his crew.

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Bikes

“Hondo Grattan” Ducati Scrambler by Deus Ex Machina

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At the Verona Motor Bike Expo, Ducati presented the first customized Ducati Scrambler models. As you may remember from our review, this $8,600 machine is pitched with a heavy lifestyle component, and Ducati hopes that fat margins on t-shirts and jackets will overcome the thin margins on the model itself. To that end, the Italian company has gone to great trouble in making the Scrambler “cool” for the younger “post-authentic” crowd.

As such, Dario Mastroianni (Officine Mermaid), Filippo Bassoli (Deus Ex Machina), and Nicola Martini (Mr. Martini) were given the first crack at modding Ducati’s newest model. The results have been interesting, and first up on our pages is the “Hondo Grattan” by Filippo Bassoli and the Deus Ex Machina crew in Milan.

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Bikes

Kawasaki Ninja H2R Streetfighter Concept by AD Koncept

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As owners take receipt of their purchases, 2015 will be marked significantly by the arrival of the Kawasaki Ninja H2/R supercharged sport bikes.

Kawasaki has assured us that it won’t take much tinkering for the H2 street bike to meet the performance specs of the H2R, a fact many deriders of the machine seem to forget when spec-sheet racing.

We are perhaps disappointed that Kawasaki made owning a Ninja H2 and Ninja H2R such an exclusive process, as it robs us of the chance to see some extreme concepts and customizations from the motorcycling community.

Take this streetfighter concept of Kawasaki Ninja H2R by AD Koncept, for instance. Pure brawny muscle, the H2 surely has the makings of being the ultimate streetfighter.

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News

Husqvarna 401 Concepts Will Be 2017 Production Models

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One of the more intriguing things to come out of the 2014 EICMA motorcycle show in Milan were Husqvarna’s two “401” concepts, the Vitpilen and Svartpilen. The café-styled bikes are based off the KTM 390 Duke platform, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at them.

Husqvarna said at EICMA that if there was sufficient interest, the Vitpilen and Svartpilen could go into production. With an overwhelming critical response from the press and fans, it should come no surprise then that our friends at Bike.se are reporting that Husqvarna intends to make the small-displacement machines a part of its 2017 model lineup.

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