Japan - mini-bike w/ auto clutch - 50cc.
What can I say, 40 years old and still lookin’ good! Buy this and wear a kilt whilst riding fast down a windy boulevard just to assert your lust for life and demonstrate you’re mad as a haggis! Then, when the 50cc fails to thrill strap on a 250cc engine and start all over. Everyone should own one of these before they die.
Japan - motorcycle - 50cc
Belen Wagner could kick proverbial butt on this racy little number! Sexy, classic forms drive this faster than it’s diminutive engine and though it’s certainly not for hill-climbing it’d be a joy for inner-city back streets, cafe hopping and sub-soi antics.
USA - motorcycle - 100cc. I designed this bike, Detroit Bros built it in Michigan, from scratch, took 8 months. Frame is a hefty 1.75” chrome moly tubing with an extendable seat stem (first ever -- that I know of -- on a motorcycle) and micro monoshock to remove a little of the jolt inherent in rigid frames. Seat is hand-stitched antiqued leather over steel seat pan. Wheels are 12” alloy rims w/ stainless hand-laced spokes and fatty street tires. Engine is a Honda air-cooled 99cc manual 4-speed with Mikuni carb w/ straight-out wrapped pipe. Tank is an aftermarket zero-rust injection-molded plastic unit for a 1974 Monkey bike. Harley pegs, billet lights, 12" apehanger bars, drum brakes, digital tac/speedo. Fully US road legal. It pulls 60mph (hold on tight) and gets 120mpg. Beat that.
Japan - motorcycle w/ auto clutch - 50cc
I recently sighted this little Japanese beauty in Tokyo and immediately fell in love! It was the collective brainchild of a team of young designers hired by Honda to come up with a new improved Honda Cub (uses the same 50cc/200mpg engine) for 21st century hipsters. Tragically it seems it was only produced in small numbers in 2003 and is almost impossible to find even in Japan. However, great news is I did just see half a dozen of them in Phnom Penh at an importers going for about $1,200 each, grab 'em while they're hot! It’s very neuvo-retro, very cool and will run for a year on 12 gallons of gas. And as we all know, it’s often better solo.
BRAT is the biz. For all you greedy hyena’s out there who feel it’s your god-given or money-privileged rite to spew out more than your fair share of carbon just so you can stroke your egos with a gas guzzling behemoth, Fa-Q! If kids ruled we’d mandate motorcycles only: those would be the rules ‘cos there’s just too many people farting around in vehicles these days, nowadays, all over the world. And who’d have imagined we’d be driving cars in the 21st Century that were 20 times less fuel efficient than a 747 with 1/100th of the passenger capacity?
But sadly, Complacency and Greed reign, not kids with conscience. If only all of us were green-hearted and concerned for our children we might be able to spare this emerald planet from inevitable suffocation. So meantime, for those with moto-humility, get a bike and know that on our deathbeds (possibly drowning in humanity’s emissions) that even if we couldn’t about-face the world’s addiction to oil at least we didn’t stand idly by, thumb in ass, resigned and complicit. We rode a motorcycle!
Brat aims to promote hyper-cool motorcycles for the imaginative eco-conscious human being. Indeed we are developing our own BRAT customs but meantime we’ll point you in the direction of those who already manufacture 2-wheeled 4-strokes that will wow you and your admirers.
Don’t use up more than your fair share of our planet.