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Things will be a little slow on Asphalt & Rubber today, as we’re in Los Angeles testing the new Ducati Diavel. We’ll be spending most of the day figuring out how to turn with a 240mm rear tire, and getting rocketed by the Diavel’s 162hp reported power figure. You can follow our thoughts on the bike via Twitter, and our last five tweets will automatically post here on this post. While we ride The Devil, the press photos of the Diavel after the jump should tide you over until we finish our ride report.

Tomorrow Asphalt & Rubber must make the trek down from perfect Northern California, to SoCal and the pits of Los Angeles, where dreams go to die. As we descend down through the lower rings of Dante’s ladder and into hell that is the perpetually sunny and warm Los Angeles, our final destination will in fact bring us face-to-face with The Devil himself. Riding the latest creation from Bologna, the American motorcycle press will get its first chance at the highly anticipated Ducati Diavel.

Since we’ll be bringing you live coverage from the event, and writing a few pieces on Ducati’s stab at the performance cruiser segment throughout the rest of the week, we thought it best to start with a primer on the motorcycle. Find after the jump the 2011 Ducati Diavel‘s technical specs, photographs, and design synthesis, and features.

While for most Americans it’s still too inclement to ride our motorcycles, Palatinus Attila sees the frozen terrain as an opportunity. As our bikes remain shut away in their garages until spring time, this intrepid lad has taken out his power drill, several hundred screws, a bit of patience, and transformed his CBR600F4 from street machine to ice queen. The result is not a rolling porcupin, but instead a machine that can find a contact patch even on the slickest of ice sheets. Take those modified tires, your bike, and find a frozen lake, and you too can do wheelies for days, just like in Attila’s latest video Ice Riding 2.0. Check it out after the jump.

To help celebrate Ayrton Badovini’s complete domination of the 2010 FIM Superstock 1000 Championship (the Italian won nine out of the ten races, finishing second only in the tenth race), BMW Italia is releasing a limited edition BMW S1000RR street version of the winning superstock bike.

With only 50 units being made, and available only in Italy, lucky owners will get the already potent S1000RR, along with a bevy of aftermarket goodies like a Akrapovic “Racing Exhaust” (pictures show a slip-on though), Gilles Tooling rearsets and levers, carbon fiber panels, LED turn signals, and of course BMW Italia’s racing colors.

Here’s a cool time-lapse video put together by MCN that follows the 2011 Ducati Diavel power cruiser getting built at Ducati’s Bologna factory. Ducati is currently building 40 Diavel’s per day on its rolling assembly line, but that number is set to increase by 50% in the coming weeks as the Italian company predicts strong sales in the summer months. As was seen last year with the Multistrada 1200, Ducati expects the Diavel to lead the company’s sales in 2011.

Back in 2009 we fell in love with the Kickboxer concept by Ian McElroy, who taught himself some SolidWorks and dreamt of a motorcycle powered by a turbocharged Subaru WRX engine. Well McElroy is back with two variations on his original Kickboxer design: one with a diesel motor (also sourced from Subaru), along with an all-wheel drive model.

To make the AWD configuration work, McElroy employed a dual-chain drive design that uses a jack shaft, idler sprocket, and a drive axle with a U-joint. While the original Kickboxer was designed in the 3D modeling software to be precise enough to produce, we’re not sure about all of the engineering behind McElroy’s AWD design (that’s a polite way of saying this author was a social science major in college), but the idea is certainly intriguing.

The diesel Kickboxer though, it’s so crazy it just might work…we’ll just have to wait for someone to build one. Renders galore after the jump.

There must be a new rule in the tourer market segment where “all new bikes” consist of minor revisions to existing machines, as Honda has apparently taken a page out of Harley-Davidson’s playbook, and done an exciting upgrade to the 2012 Honda Goldwing. While rumors were overly-hyped that an all-new Goldwing would be making an American appearance, it appears instead that the Honda engineers have gone on to further improve upon their design of the legendary touring motorcycle.

No longer built in America at Honda’s now defunct Marysville, Ohio plant, the Japanese produced 2012 Honda Goldwing comes with a slightly larger price tag, but boasts some improvements to justify the cost. Revamped bodywork, larger capacity luggage pieces, improved built-in GPS with iPod/MP3 player support, and revised suspension complete the changes for the new Goldwing. It’s hard to impress sport bike guys with a big bike like the Honda Goldwing, but if you’re interested in buying the gold standard (no pun intended) of motorcycle touring, things just got a bit more appealing we imagine.

We really want to hate this F1 Tracker concept by Marcus Moto Design, we really do. While the BMX-style handlebars might be palatable, the huge 1970’s F1-inspired air scoop is not only awkwardly eye-catching, but could potentially make things interesting from a practicality point-of-view. So we won’t hold it against of our dear readers if the comments section is full of snarky anonymous posts blasting the F1 Tracker into motorcycling hell…honest.

But before you set phasers to kill, take a second look at this design, because there is some sheer brilliance in it. Air scoops aside (we must admit, it does grow on you after a while), the F1 Tracker’s lines have a great flat-tracker meets sport bike quality to them that makes you with the Italian company would pick-up on some of the ideas Marcus is putting down here…and then there’s the carbon fiber…everything. We like that.

Along with the official unveiling of the 2011 Yamaha MotoGP team & livery, the Japanese manufacturer has also released photos of the 2011 Yamaha YZR-M1, with accompanying technical specifications. Unsurprisingly, Yamaha is keeping many of its exact specifications close to the chest, but test reports indicate that a refined chassis, and a slightly more powerful motor have been added to the 2011 YZR-M1.

Yup, it’s official folks: Yamaha will run without a title sponsor for the 2011 MotoGP season (at least initially), as the team’s official race livery was unveiled at Sepang today (actually, we’re releasing these photos ahead of the official announcement, so in a way this post is coming from the future), along with the official unveiling of the 2011 Yamaha YZR-M1 MotoGP race bike.

Trading a corporate sponsor for a “50th Year in Road Racing Championship Grand Prix” emblem, Yamaha has seemingly been unable to woo a title backer onto its carbon fiber fairings after Fiat’s departure, despite winning the team, rider, and manufacturer Championships in the 2010 season. Check out the full gallery after the jump.

It looks like we didn’t have to wait until tomorrow to see the 2011 Erik Buell Racing 1190RS finally out in the open (and with its clothes on this time). Finally breaking cover, we can see the details of the EBR 1190RS that Erik Buell has been hiding from his fans for all this time. Called the Erik Buell Racing 1190RS Carbon Edition, the name implies what material the bike mostly consists of, as this is supposed to be the premium model that will be sold in limited quantities to help get the 1190RS homologated for racing duty.

Only 100 or so models are needed for such a purpose, meaning this will be limited-run, and one expensive endevour for the intrepid few (Buell isn’t quoting prices just yet, but Ducati 1198R prices are being banded about). While the high-cost will keep many Buell fans left out in the cold, cheaper, more production-ready examples of the 1190RS are expected down the line. It seems Erik Buell Racing wants the 1190RS Carbon Edition to be its halo bike, as the company looks to recreate a dealer network, woo investors, and begin racing on a more even playing field with the other 1,200cc racing v-twins and 1,000 racing inline-fours.