Harley has already confirmed its e-bike will be built more than once, but yesterday’s further confirmation following H-D’s Q4/2017 results seems to have resparked interest in Project Livewire.

The Hotel Caribe in Cartagena sits at the western end of a peninsula, a first-class hotel in a first-class city. But there are things that even the finest hotels do not offer, and one of those is a box of Cardboardeaux. At home I prefer the whimsicality of Black Box or Bota. So the other night I decided my first foot expedition would be to celebrate my brush with airline death with una caja de vino, as the locals say.

Last week we saw a teaser video followed by confirmed CARB filings of a new Triumph Speed Triple RS and R versions. As noted in the CARB filings, the engine will retain its 1050cc capacity, however, the new mill has received a different engine code which suggests changes from the previous model.

R. E. Higdon has been a motorcycle pen pal for as long as I can remember, whose best prsose is the fan mail he occasionally sends. But he’s in fact a better writer than most of us. A retired D.C. atttorney, he’s written for all manner of motorcycle publications on the side, most recently for the Iron Butt Association’s magazine. When he let drop he was undertaking a big trip to South America, naturally we asked if we could ride along. 

It’s hard to tell, but the outlook appears promising. By now, we’ve all heard that the motorcycle industry has been in somewhat of a stagnant rut over the last 10 years compared to the numbers it was enjoying during the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but I’m not here to beat a dead horse. Things are looking up. Or so it seems.

It’s going on as we speak in Sin City through Saturday, and if you wander over to Mecum.com, you can see the results of what’s already sold for how much, along with everything that’s yet to be gavelled off. If you need a 1961 Victoria Model 15 Lot #F69, like the one in the photo, you better hurry. Speaking of sin, would you pay $13,000 for an original Honda GB500?

The 2018 Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team has unveiled its new liveries and motorcycles in Madrid just four days before the first official pre-season test in Sepang. The presentation was hosted in Spain due to the new five-year agreement signed between Yamaha Factory Racing and Telefónica Spain, which will see Movistar as the title sponsor for the duration of the contract.

Upcoming Motorcycle Events: Jan 23 – Feb 27

Is there a rule at Isle of Man that says you have to be human? I’m pretty sure jet airplanes are against the rules. Nevertheless, this feline is keeping up a frisky pace…

Superstitions are a funny thing. Whether they actually have an effect on an outcome or not is still up in the air, but then again there’s no real way to prove or disprove they don’t, so I might as well keep on practicing mine because, well… because. That’s just what I do! Call it what you want to call it, but I like to think superstition works for me, mostly…

And in those days, when men were men (quite literally in one case), they gathered all together with the great motorcycles of the day, in the desert. And there did they smoketh of the tires, and yea verily did they grind of the gears, the greatest men of the day – King Roland of Sands, King Graves of Chuck, along with Brett Landes the dirt tracker, and MO’s founder, King Plummer, and his disciples. For three long days they rode around the Springs of Willow and launched themselves down the dragstrip, in a time that seems far, far more than just 20 years ago. 

It was a sad day when I finally returned the 2017 Triumph Street Triple RS that I so fondly grew to love. I begged, pleaded and even threw a candy-aisle temper tantrum, kicking and screaming to no avail. No, not really, but handing the keys back over to Triumph was bittersweet, like dropping family off at the airport. All good things must come to an end, I suppose.

Classified Moto’s slightly customized Speed Triple, Frank, might not be your entirely practical cup of tea, but the Richmond, Virginia-based shop builds plenty of other unique motorcycles that could be. They do lots of interesting things with old Yamaha Viragos.

The Bonneville family continues to expand with its 2018 Triumph Bonneville Speedmaster. The new Speedmaster builds on the Bobber and Bonneville lines to offer a versatile cruiser with a level of refinement and finish that has become synonymous with Triumph’s recent model releases.

But deluded people don’t realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside

Give A Shift is the punny name given to an initiative intended to forward the cause of motorcycling in the U.S. market, which is showing signs of shrinkage due to a variety of reasons: demographic, cultural, and systemic.

Motorcycle.com has been following the riding exploits of Michelle Christine, who is exploring adventures on two wheels in between the stand-up comedy shows she performs around the world.

The motorcycle industry is in trouble and it’s all my fault. When I say “my,” I mean millennials. We get blamed for being lazy and entitled – and now for the decline of the motorcycle industry. Aging motorcyclists are going out faster than newer riders are coming in. Younger folks just don’t seem to be interested in motorcycling, they say. This has caused manufacturers to dump millions into not only marketing, but also research and development to create new motorcycles in order to save the motorcycle industry. They need to find some sort of solution.

Setting out on a motorcycle trip can change a person – I’m sure some of you probably already know that. Many of us take long trips on our motorcycles for that exact reason. We need to refresh our outlook. To remind ourselves of the simple and beautiful parts of life that all too often get overlooked. When I left my home on a sweltering Tuesday in late October, I knew I wouldn’t be the same upon my return. I welcomed that fact wholeheartedly. With a full tank of gas and a friend by my side, I left the person I was at that moment behind and focused on the road ahead.

Motorcyclists in California have been enjoying the fruits of lane-splitting for decades now. For a long time, lane-splitting (or the more PC and less abrasive sounding, lane-sharing or filtering) was a gray area in California law because it was neither legal nor illegal, so it was permitted, or rather tolerated so long as the practice was done safely. In 2016, however, lane-splitting became 100% legal – not without limitations, but legal nonetheless.

The idea of not wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle is one of those things that really makes me scratch my head, which I’m thankful to still have… thanks to, oh I don’t know, a helmet?

Okay, yeah, this isn’t really us. The people who built the Rover Imperial brought way more mechanical skill to the table than most of us MOrons are capable of, and they started doing it in 1902. From sandcasting the cylinders to getting both sick air and sideways on the shake-down run (and annoying pedestrians), it’s all here in this amazing ten-minute vid from the Isle of Man official page – minus the ATGATT, since ATG had not yet been conceived of. Behold also the child labor, and marvel that the production of an entire motorcycle didn’t even require all that many tools. We’ve come a long way. Here’s to the people who built Rover Imperial, not to the mention the videographer who lugged God-only-knows how many pounds of gear around to document it all.

Dear MOby,

There appears to be no shortage of audacity in Australia, evidenced by at least three motorcycles from Oz that are powered by V-8 engines. The originator was Ian Drysdale, who first mated a pair of four-cylinder banks to a common crankshaft in the late 1990s. In 2015, we saw the intimidating Aurora Hellfire OZ26, powered by a home-built 2575cc V-8 claimed to produce 417 horsepower.

When John speaks, I listen…

This, boys and girls, is why you should always wear proper riding gear when you’re on a motorcycle. Remember, he wasn’t going terribly fast, and when you see his fingers dangling in the after crash footage, you’ll understand that off-road gloves won’t do you much good on pavement. Now, let’s consider his leg protection – which was nothing more than a smattering of youthful hair. At least he had the good sense to wear a helmet.

From FB friend Lance Lau, we learn that our new BFF, Pete, of Superbikeuniverse.com in Norwalk, Connecticut, is liquidating his rather impressive collection. To go car racing. How sad. And yet, Pete’s demented journey to the dark side can be your gain. He only wants $10,000 for the `86 NS400R with 8 (eight!) miles in the lead photo.

The 2018 Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship is upon us. In two days, the gates will drop in Anaheim and racers aboard 250cc and 450cc bikes will compete bar-to-bar in an effort to edge each other out for a place on the top step of the podium. With no shortage of drama last year in both the Supercross and Outdoor National series, racing in 2018 should be as competitive as ever across both classes.

Recently, we published our Lightweight ADV Shootout which involved the CSC RXR, Kawasaki Versys-X 300, and Honda CRF250L Rally. I rode the Honda home and had it in my garage until it needed to be returned to Honda’s headquarters. This gave me a bit more time with the rally-inspired 250 and I found myself reaching for the keys more often than not.

It’s a new year which means it’s time once again for the world’s most grueling off-road endurance race, the Dakar Rally. Celebrating its 40th edition, the 2018 Dakar Rally runs Jan. 6-20, starting in Lima, Peru, crossing into Bolivia with a rest day in La Paz, and then entering Argentina for the finish line at Cordoba.

Experienced riders will get asked “what’s the best first bike?” hundreds of times, but probably won’t get asked what the worst first bike is. Good thing, too: you could spend all day listing bikes an inexperienced rider should avoid. Of course, if they want one of the listed examples, they won’t listen to you anyway, but here’s what we think new riders should stay very, very far away from.

Motorcycles are the coolest way to transport humans on the ground. The feeling we get bending a bike into a corner and tilting a horizon is so much more flowing and invigorating than driving a car, as is the intensity of acceleration a motorbike can provide. Add in to this stimulation the sound and character of a variety of engine configurations, and it’s easy to see why the sights and sounds of a motorcycle video are highly desired in this digital age.

Racer’s newest short-cuff glove is the Racer Sprint, a well-ventilated summer glove that should offer plenty of protection to keep your digits comfortable and safe. We received the Sprint glove mid-September of this year, and they have been my go-to hand protection ever since. Being that California has relatively warm temperatures, I have had no issue using these gloves during press launches, shootouts, and personal rides.

Plenty of weird stuff happened in 2017, but no weirder than usual so I really can’t complain. We’ll miss Nicky Hayden, who I remember reading about in Roadracing World when he was 13 years old (how old does that make me?), and has now departed this mortal coil way too early. I won’t miss, they tell me, the corporate tax rate of 35%, which is going down to 20% and will supposedly juice the economy like crazy and lead to a new bull market in motorcycles like the one in the ’Aughts. That’ll make everybody around here happy. All the kids are getting rich on Bitcoin, too, and home equity is on the rise again. We’ve already got granite countertops and big knockers; what does that leave? Motorcycles, that’s what. Basically we’re all set to get on up out this biatch and do some serious WINNING! Here are my predictions for 2018!

The Ducati Multistrada may look relatively unchanged compared to its outgoing predecessor, but the new 2018 Ducati Multistrada 1260 has its own host of upgrades that add to the already versatile package enjoyed by Ducati’s sport-tourer.

We continue our look back through the past 12 months and reminisce about some of our favorite bike comparisons of 2017.

General Motors acquired Cruise, an autonomous car start-up, last year, and has been testing its cars ever since in San Francisco and other places. Why not? “Our vehicles encounter challenging (and often absurd) situations up to 46 times more often than other places self-driving cars are tested,” according to Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt in this article at arstechnica.com.

Oh my goodness… “in every squad of troops, whether they’re learning to stick bayonets in other troops, to peel potatoes or merely to ride motorbikes, there’s always at least one whose special role is to be picked, whose special skill is to get things wrong. Here there are two: number 23 and number 5.”

Motorcycle licensing in the United Kingdom is a convoluted process that requires several steps to be taken before riders qualify for riding bigger and more powerful bikes. It’s a tiered process dependent on age and riding experience that begins with the AM Mopeds (less than 50cc) stage, then to the A1 Light Motorcycle (120cc to 125cc, less than 14.8 hp) and then the A2 Motorcycle (at least 395cc and between 26.8 and 46.9 hp).

Here we are with another year coming to an end. It was another great year in motorcycling for 2017. Yes, even with all the doom and gloom from “industry insiders” tirelessly trying to understand why don’t millennials like motorcycles, and low sales numbers from some of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, it was still a great time to be a motorcyclist.

Jonathan Rea didn’t win BBC Sport’s Sports Personality of the Year 2017 award, but he did finish second, and that’s pretty dang good for a Superbike racer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Four-time Olympic champion long-distance runner Mo Farah was the winner, with 83,524 votes to JR’s 80,567 – but the main take-away is that Rea badly beat F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, who finished sixth with 60,627 votes.

Here at Motorcycle.com, we try to cover the breadth of motorcycling. Every day, we strive to find and deliver the very best that the world of motorcycles has to offer. In the spirit of that endeavor, we look forward to the end of the year as an opportunity to gaze back over the past 12 months to see where we were successful. We’ve found the best way to gauge how well we have achieved our goal is to look at what articles our readers have been clicking on as they visited our site or queried search engines.

As technology races towards the future, style is moving the opposite direction, regressing to the past. Fortunately for us motorcyclists, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, which means we can have it both ways. Take the 2018 Triumph Bonneville Bobber Black, for instance – it’s a juxtaposition between modern technology and post-WWII style. The bobber style, for those of you who aren’t familiar, harkens back to the 1940s when American riders would get rid of anything they could to shed weight by cutting and removing bodywork and ‘bobbing’ the fenders. The desired effect was to be able to keep up with the lighter, faster British and Japanese bikes that began to flood American shores.

While everybody talks about how to get more people onto motorcycles, CSC Motorcycles is busy doing about 75% of the things that need to be done. CSC’s cute little RXR didn’t win last week’s 2017 Lightweight ADV Shootout, but it did surprisingly well against a couple of bikes that cost a bunch more money: $3,495 is almost cheap enough for even me to be able to afford one, but wait, there’s more. Included in the price of this ADV bike is an actual ADV. (Actually you’ll have to spend $400 more for the RX3, which comes with locking luggage and other accessories to make it tour-worthy.)

Of the things we love most, we often think about things we grew to love in our formative years. This is often true for music, vacation destinations, loves, and, yes, motorcycles.

As 2017 is winding to a close, it’s time to reflect back at the year that was. We’ll be publishing several articles over the next couple of weeks that outline many of the highlights from the past year, but first is this fun look back at what we think are some of the most annoying motorcycle trends witnessed in 2017, as authored by our inimitable John Burns. We predict a lively comments section… –Ed.

The new model announcement season is an exciting time for motorcyclists, as it’s when we get our first glance at all the latest motorcycles being released in the upcoming year. While AIMExpo, with its extremely early event date (starting on September 22nd), was short on new models, EICMA blew the doors off of 2018 with no less than 37 different new bikes that we covered here on MO.

Rumor filtering down through the ranks has it that when the new version of KTM’s not-so-old uber tourer gets here later in the year, it’s going to be sporting a swell TFT display like the one on brother Super Duke R, along with the other Dukes’ promiscuous split LED headlight and a new windscreen.

Frenchman Francois Gissy made this record run over three years ago at Circuit Paul Ricard, but it only came to my attention yesterday. Unsure what kind of bicycle wheels don’t fly apart at 207 mph (333 kph), a speed Gissy attained after using up only about 750 meters of the Mistral Straight thanks to hydrogen peroxide boost, but everything did indeed remain intact. The Ferrari running alongside the bicycle, okay starting out alongside it, puts that speed into perspective.

My dad always says, “Take care of what takes care of you.” I think this applies to just about everything in life if you want to get ahead. Whether it be your work, home, tools or relationships – showing a little love goes a long way.

UPDATE: Honda has now released a higher-quality video of the race in its entirety. Check it out below.

I had cause to reflect back on 40-some-odd years of riding and the changes we have witnessed, with an inquiry seeking enlightenment from the MO Think Tank. The query was cause for reflection: “Will I Be Shunned if I Ride an Automatic Motorcycle?”

Riding a motorcycle at its limits requires multiple inputs being made smoothly and simultaneously, and this expertise is on wonderous display in the video below. It shows police officer Quinn Redeker, Jr. ripping up a parking-lot course that was part of a motorcycle skills competition among police motor cops.

When I was told I would be tasked with putting together the $250 and up category of our 2017 gift guide, I must admit, I smirked on the inside. What an easy thing to do! Motorcycling can be expensive and the parts we pine after generally are expensive. So here is a list of items in the $250 and up category for that someone speciale in your life. The sky’s the limit!

Hopefully, you’ll never experience the sinking feeling of having your motorcycle suddenly sputter and die while you’re in the left hand lane of a crowded highway traveling at 70 mph. Or maybe it’s that mushy wobble of a rear tire that is quickly going flat. Mechanical problems are never fun, but on the interstate, they can be dangerous if you don’t take the proper steps. So, what’s a rider to do?

Wow, the things you find on the interwebs. Here’s a photo of a young Keith Code aboard his Ducati 200 Supersport, aka Elite, shot at Vineland Raceway in New Jersey, 1962, at a US Motorcycle Club event.

I’m a little worried about the valve deal that causes the dishwasher to flood under the sink whenever I use it, but Thanksgiving’s done so that can wait. The Ranger’s AC is out, but now it’s winter (and 72 degrees on my Kalifornia patio). There’s a clunk under the Jaguar that might be a ball joint or something, but no wheels are obviously falling off. My child is having GF problems, but he’s 23 and suddenly self-supporting. I think there are a few other items; luckily I’ve forgotten them.

Thomas R. “Big Tom” Callahan, Jr., an auto parts salesman from Sandusky, Ohio, once said, “You can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a bull’s ass, but wouldn’t you rather take a butcher’s word for it?” When it comes to steak, we at MO would be inclined to heed the butcher’s advice, but when it comes to motorcycles, we’d prefer to take that “deeper” look to see for ourselves…

Not sure if Josh Herrin is testing the Yamaha R1’s traction control, lean-sensitive ABS, or both at once. But he’s got the tires howling like a pair of mating orangutans in this sideways video clip our pal Jim found on Alpinestars’ Instagram feed. Our best advice is not to ride like this on the street unless you have an AMA Superbike Championship and a Daytona 200 win on your resume. Also, stay in school so you don’t have to be a videographer. Actually, come to think of it, whoever shot this clip on their phone is the bravest person in the room, or possibly just the least familiar with an important law of physics. Cue disclaimer: Professional rider on closed course. Do not try at home.

The final installment of this year’s diatribe should, one thinks, start with an examination of the season preview from back in February. Heading into Qatar, the conventional thinking was that Maverick Viñales, newly and firmly ensconced on the factory Yamaha, the best bike on earth of late, would challenge triple world champion Marc Marquez and his Repsol Honda – you remember, the one with the acceleration issues – for the world championship.