#project

Maybe I’ve been hanging out with Managing Editor Ryan Adams too much. After more than 30 years of riding almost exclusively on the street, I’ve been bitten by the off-road bug. (Having a 14 year-old daughter who asked me to teach her to ride dirt bikes played a big part, too.) However, I don’t want to just drive to the desert, do daylong dirt rides, load the bikes in the truck, and drive home. I want to travel, too. Adventure touring has tickled my fancy.

Anybody who’s not playing in the ADV sandbox isn’t really playing in 2022, and that’s why MV Agusta is now dipping an exploratory toe. Two toes: Lucky Explorer 5.5 and Lucky Explorer 9.5. The 5.5, which at some point may inherit the Elefant monicker, is to be powered by a 554 cc DOHC parallel Twin to come from MV’s Chinese partner, QJ. “Despite being a mid-sized bike,” says MV, “its appearance is that of a higher displacement travel-oriented motorcycle, capable of seducing European riders looking for a sturdy and unstoppable companion.”

What we have here is a genetically altered motorcycle that used to be a 2012 Victory Cross Country. Given its 21-inch front wheel and saddlebag speakers, it can be seen as a transitionary mutation between the CC and the recently released Magnum. However, the characteristic we’re here to address can be found wrapped around the engine. (After all we’ve reviewed the 2015 Victory Magnum, in case you’re interested in the whole big front wheel and the kickin’ stereo thing.)

I bought my $1,500 mongrel 2000 Yamaha R1 during a sad period of my life when people weren’t giving me new motorcycles every week or two, and I needed a project I could ride. A couple years later, I bumped into Evan Steel ( evansteelperformance), who trained under the great Kaz Yoshima of Ontario Moto-Tech fame, and worked with Jeremy Toye at Lee’s Cycles in San Diego for some time. A few years ago, Evan and business partner/ fellow moto-wiz Phil Allison (Toye’s ex-Superbike mechanic) set off to open their own shop in Tucson, Arizona, where they love the warmth. More recently, Evan has been off in Italy tuning Aaron Yates’s EBR World Superbike, yet another thankless task … Before all the EBR stuff transpired, though, Evan said I should drop off my old R1 at his shop so he could build a beast like the first-gen R1 he and Kaz and Phil built for multi-time Willow Springs Champ Curtis Adams back in the Formula USA days. Why not? By then, people were giving me new bikes again, thank God.