Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 2 - 2020 i Cycle World

Like the rest of the world, we went from planning things, working, and living our lives to a great screeching halt. The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus meant the time between being out on the road with our testing crew to hiding out at home most of the time was shockingly short. First, we here at Cycle World and the Bonnier Motorcycle Group wish you, your friends, and your family health and safety. We hope by the time this issue is out, that we can begin to see a path toward resolution and solid plans to get back some version of normal life while keeping everyone safe. The motorcycle business is getting hit pretty hard (along with most businesses), while motorcycling itself remains a savior. Many places, it is…

The word “spring” usually applies to an intentionally created elastic element, such as the helical coil springs used in vehicle suspension or engine valve trains. It can also apply to the compressibility of gases, as in the pneumatic valve springs used in MotoGP, or in the MX “air suspensions” that flower every few years. Rubber in torsion was a common form of spring in 1960s British motocross bikes. Spring can also describe structures never intended to be flexible, as when former Ducati engineer Corrado Cecchinelli explained to me that certain riders mistakenly feel flex in footpeg brackets as loss of tire grip. Structures acting as springs became a big subject during the decades when chatter set the upper limit of chassis performance. I was shown a Yamaha 750 Superbike on…

In 1980, Cycle World dubbed the four-valve Suzuki GS1100 “the best all-around superbike in history.” It turned the quarter-mile in 11.39 seconds at 118.42 mph. It was arguably the finest-handling Japanese production motorcycle of the time. It was practical; it got 47.4 mpg on the CW test loop, and it was as comfortable as anything without a Windjammer fairing. It was a formidable large-capacity motorcycle with real presence. It may have been exceptional, but the GS1100 was nothing new. Like other iconic superbikes of the era—the Kawasaki Z1 and Honda CB750, for instance—the big GS exemplified the Japanese motorcycle industry’s conservative approach toward design. Wide bars, circular headlight, and bread-loaf seat were the status quo. To the unacquainted in 2020, there aren’t a lot of visual cues that distinguish the…

Gather round, meine Damen und Herren, because we’re about to explore one of the most fascinating motorcycle backstories of the 1980s: how a Japanese company hired a German wunderkind to design a motorcycling icon of the Blade Runner era—Suzuki’s original 1982 GS1000SZ Katana. The Katana was a shocker when it first appeared, a machine that stood out everywhere it showed up. And that was exactly what Suzuki wanted when it hired Hans Muth to create a look. Muth was and still is an interesting character. Born in 1935 in Rathenow, just west of Berlin, he witnessed his mother being shot dead by the advancing Red Army 10 years later. He characterizes his upbringing as strict Prussian, taught to be respectful, polite, well-behaved, disciplined, honest, and obedient. Above all, he developed…

When I had accumulated some basic experience as quite a young man, I realized there were clear national styles in motorcycle engines, but in this new century, I see such diversity receding in favor of a new international style. I saw that British designers reacted against oil leakage and Times of London gasket material by employing a multitude of screws to hold case covers in place. Examples are the attractive, polished timing covers of British twins, but the extreme is exemplified by the cam covers of the Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft V-12, secured by nearly 30 fasteners each. Also very British was too few crank-shaft main bearings—as in giving a parallel-twin or even an inline-four just two of them, and “lettin’ ’er flex” in jump-rope fashion. Also essentially British in nature…

The safety bicycle, which exploded into a popular craze around 1895, can be regarded as a confluence of technologies that matured at that time—the ball bearing, pneumatic tire, seamless-drawn steel tubing, roller chain and sprocket drive, and super-strong hard-drawn steel wire. A final ingredient might be the production and shaping of thin metal sheet by rolling. The last two together made possible one of the most efficient structures known to mechanical engineering: the tension-spoked wire wheel. A roll-formed rim is made by slitting sheet steel into strips, then roll-forming those strips into a wheel-rim section that was finally roll-bent into a circle. The butt ends were joined by brazing or welding. The wheel hub consisted of a pair of spoke flanges joined by a tube, spinning on the new screw-adjustable…

You can go farther on many bikes, and faster on others. There are many motorcycles that would also give you greater comfort and convenience. But, I ask you, are you here to ride free on comfort and convenience? Nice to have, sure, but we are here for fun. And so are these five bikes. They represent pure joy and personality, the essential spirit of good times on two wheels. There is retro inspiration here, but these are modern motorcycles with ride-enhancing tech that generally runs unnoticed in the background while your smile leads you down the road. What’s particularly compelling here is that each bike represents a spiritual and cultural path related to the heritage of its manufacture and design. So even if the actual engineering that’s created them is…

In the male-dominated world of motorcycling, protective-gear makers largely approached designing for women by using either the stereotypical “pink it and shrink it” approach, or simply adding rhinestones, fringe, or prints depicting floral designs or tribal butterflies. And loudly logoed, to boot. Things have finally changed over the past few years as several boutique brands have popped up offering a different design approach. ATWYLD, founded by Anya Violet, Corinne Mayer, and Jaime Dempsey, is one of the more prominent brands bringing a fashion-focused street-wear-inspired look to women’s riding gear. They all had observed lots of women rejecting conventional technical riding gear because they didn’t like how it looked, choosing to wear street clothes. “Why not take those protective qualities and put them into everyday street silhouettes?” Violet says. “The…