#Eicma

A year ago at EICMA, Honda debuted its intriguing City Adventure concept, combining an adventure-bike design with a scooter platform. Today, Honda officially presented the final production version in the 2017 X-ADV. At the moment, the X-ADV has only been announced for Europe and it’s not likely to be brought over to the U.S.

The minute we learned Triumph would be creating a new engine platform for its Bonneville extended family, we knew a Scrambler version would eventually materialize. And here it is, unveiled today in Milan, Italy, at the EICMA show.

Hot on the heels of its popular new Africa Twin model introduced last year comes a lighter-weight adventure-focused motorcycle from Honda, the CRF250L Rally. The Rally is based on the updated-for-2017 CRF250L and inspired by the factory CRF450 Rally machine raced in the Dakar by Team HRC.

With a pocketful of spy shots as proof, we sleuthy MOrons proudly scooped the news a few months ago that Ducati was planning to produce a new air-cooled Monster ( 2017 Ducati Monster 800 Spy Shots). Today at EICMA, Ducati presented the production version. The 2017 Monster 797 borrows the air-cooled 803cc L-Twin from Ducati’s Scrambler models and repackages it for use in its newest naked.

Ducati capped off its 2016 EICMA presentation with a limited-edition 1299 Superleggera, packaging its powerful 1285cc Superquadro engine almost entirely in carbon fiber. The 1299 SL uses the lightweight material for its structural components, which is a first for a production motorcycle (albeit limited to 500 units), for a claimed wet weight of 364 pounds (368 for European models). The price for what Ducati calls the “quintessence of motorcycling?” £72,000 or $89,225 US. But you can put away your checkbook because Ducati says all 500 units are already sold out.

It’s that time of year again: New Bike Season. We’ve already gotten a taste of what’s to come in 2017 thanks to the Intermot show in Cologne, Germany, and AIMExpo in Orlando last month, but when we really want to drool over what awaits us in 2017, EICMA is the show to pay attention to. No less than 30 companies will be making big announcements over the course of the three days that span Nov. 7-9, and our man Evans Brasfield will be on the ground in Milan covering the action as it happens. He’ll even be shooting some video footage we’ll post right here on these pages.

KTM has launched a microsite teasing a redesigned Duke for EICMA. The site, KTMDukes.com, created in September, shows a 34-second video and the phrase “How Duke are you?” with the promise of more information on Nov. 8, the first press day of EICMA.

We’re just days away from the 2016 edition of EICMA, the world’s largest motorcycle show. As usual, Ducati opens up the EICMA festivities with a presentation the day before the official media day, and you can watch it streamed live right here on MO on Nov. 7 at 10:30 am EST (7:30 am PST).

A couple of weeks ago, Yamaha announced several U.S. models returning for 2017 with minor updates (i.e. Bold New Graphics) including several scooter models. While the SMax, Vino Classic and Zuma scooters were confirmed, Yamaha’s range-topping TMax was conspicuously absent from the announcement.

With the 2016 iterations of Intermot and AIMExpo in the books, we’re left with EICMA as the remaining traditional trade/consumer show with some yet unrevealed new models for 2017. Rumor has it Honda is saving a world premiere for the Long Beach IMS show a week after EICMA, so there may be a surprise yet come. We’ll let ya know as soon as we can confirm. Here’s what we know about each bike to be unwrapped in a week’s time:

Ducati seems to be ready to launch a new version of its limited-edition halo superbike, the Superleggera, and it apparently comes with some staggering numbers: 220 hp and 342 lbs. Oh, and then there’s the purported 66,000 English Pounds it’s rumored to cost in Europe.

Within the past week, Ducati has published two videos on its YouTube page teasing two new Scrambler variants: the Cafe Racer and Desert Sled. The first video, published on October 11, teases the Cafe Racer model. The 14-second long video doesn’t reveal too much, obviously, other than a man in a dimly-lit garage standing next to the Cafe Racer, about to install its nicely-styled leather-wrapped seat onto the bike. Seeing as there’s hardly any light in the garage, it’s difficult to make out any features of the new Scrambler. However, the California Air Resources Board has already certified both the Cafe Racer and Desert Sled models, so we know both bikes are based on the standard 803cc Scrambler and not the smaller Sixty2. Given the Cafe Racer name, it’s reasonable to expect lower bars, possibly a solo seat with a cowl over the tail, and street-biased tires on 17-inch wheels instead of the knobs and 18-inch front wheel on the standard Scrambler.

During its presentation at Intermot, Kawasaki announced a new Z900, but we’d have to wait until EICMA to see it. Still, Kawasaki released a pair of images and some preliminary details with the caveat that they were still subject to change. Here’s what we know so far.

It didn’t take long after we put up our story about the 2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 before a commenter mused about how a naked model using the same platform could look. Well funny you should ask, because here it is.

Just as we suspected, Honda today unveiled its much anticipated 2017 CBR1000RR at Intermot in Germany. We first reported on the new CBR last month as spy photos started to come out, but Honda still had a few surprises in store with this announcement. Two, actually. First, Honda decided to release its up-spec model, the CBR1000RR SP, ahead of the standard edition (Honda says to expect an announcement on that one come November). And second, there would be a second, limited-edition model, the CBR1000RR SP2, homologated strictly for racing purposes (more on that later).