Ryca Café Racer/Streettracker

USA – motorcycle – 650cc

What is it? It’s a beautiful and ingenious café racer expertly crafted by a rocket scientist in California! Actually Casey Stevenson is a visionary in many regards. Firstly he recognized the wonderful Suzuki engine for what it was -- namely a single cylinder, twin combustion chambered, air cooled, 4-stroke engine with a single 40mm Mikuni carb belting out ladles of mid range torque for the kind of riding that gives hardened bikers a shit-eating grin. It is the only engine of its exact type and displacement in any current day street-legal production motorcycle and probably the simplest engine setup anytime, anywhere (equal in engineering brilliance to my favorite thumpers, the Honda 99cc engine used in the current CRF and the Suzuki 250cc used in the current TU250). Good find #1. Secondly, the full cradle frame this engine normally resides in is the simplest frame geometry and the most adaptable for customizing. Because many modern production bikes use the engine as a stressed component then full cradle frames are rare, and custom flattracker frames can cost a small fortune so this is good find #2. Belt drive is good find #3 – sweet, clean, quiet power delivery that is very kind to the engine it stems from and promotes all round mechanical longevity. Then with some artistically styled components Casey has found the perfect balance of function and cool. With all these good finds “chance” suddenly becomes a non sequitur as it is displaced by genius -- and the CS-1 is the butterfly to the S40 caterpillar as it metamorphoses a non-descript little cruiser into a seriously sexy ride dripping with thump and style. Though we must tip our hats to Suzuki for assembling so many wonderful parts in a single perambulator, it is the necromancer Mr Stevenson who gets final praise for sighting the potential secreted therein. I shall watch from the sidelines with bated breath to see what this man’ll conjure up next!

Genuine Stella

USA – scooter - 148cc

I recently bumped into this little cutie on the street and immediately fell head-over-heels! This is the quintessential marriage of retro and modern wrapped in an ergonomic wet dream. If you are an environmentalist then this mode of transport is an obligation (recorded 90-120mpg). If you are a poseur then this is the one accessory (bar underwear) you cannot live without. If you are allergic to plastic bodywork then this stamped-steel steed will steal your heart. If you enjoy sunny jaunts along country lanes with your buddy then these are your wheels. If you are on a date with a picnic hamper and a paramour on the back (and mischief on your mind) then this is the sweet spot that’ll get you to home base. If you are tired of the rat race and accelerated modernity, then this is the antidote. There is no way of looking at Stella without falling in love because nothing oozes romance like this pretty lady whether she’s nimbly lane splitting inner city gridlocks or waltzing through the rural curves -- it’s the little scooter that could and the one you shouldn’t let get away. Hasten to genuinescooters.com and get 'em while they're hot!

Yamaha V-Star Custom

Japan/USA - motorcycle - 650cc

I'm very partial to air-cooled engines: generally tougher than nails and leaner in looks they just suit my aesthetic sensibilities better. My current favorite in the Yamaha line up is a very curvy number called the V-Star Custom which comes in all black and has the bare minimum in bells & whistles, and all for under $7k. Admittedly it's only a 650cc but if you're not size-ist and when it's delivered by a refined Japanese powerplant it's very often all you need for most applications. It has nice hardtail looks with softail comfort, a decent saddle for two-up and a neuvo-retro headlamp that I kinda like. I would probably stick a pair of 16" apes on it (or a drag bar) and pop out the muffler end cones before I rolled it off the factory floor but that done I reckon you'd have a mean dependable chop that'd garner envious looks and get you around in style. Having ironbutted this fair land of ours and visited almost every state in the saddle, I can tell you that rock-solid dependability is my mantra. This bike delivers that and enough cool factor to earn you street cred too.

Sportster Forty-Eight

USA – motorcycle – 1200cc

Harley Davidson is now thinking! I just viewed the HD website – something I haven’t done in a while – and I was impressed. The new lineup of Sportsters is rocking! Finally HD have broken away from the same old predictable models and taken cues from our nation’s great custom builders to construct radical rides that are actually handsome and will appeal to a broader range of young up-and-coming bikers. An applause is due for the design team and financial facilitators at HD. My personal favorite is the Forty-Eight. This is a gorgeous piece of mechanical ass that makes my heart melt and actually caused me to question my longstanding adoration for the Yamaha V-Max – not that they can be compared for any other reason than they both have 2 wheels – but because gazing on the Forty-Eight made me rethink my riding motives; rocket-ship-straight-lining versus cool-hooligan-rampaging. I love it. It is now my new pinup. I gaze at her and daydream, and suspect she’ll soon be my new mistress for romping getaways while all my other girls sit patiently, forlornly, in the garage.

My reservations with Chinese motors.

My qualms with Chinese engine manufacturing do not come from anything other than experience: I’m not an engineer, I haven’t spent time in a Chinese steel plant, I don’t have a degree in metallurgy, but I do know from 32 years on two wheels that when it comes to steel and alloy production the US, Britain and Japan are unrivalled. China – for all intents and purposes – produces engines that almost perfectly replicate Japanese designs, but (and this is a big BUT) in order to keep a competitive price margin they skimp on the forging method and constituents which - when it comes to something like an engine that must endure unfathomable repetitive stresses – ultimately means there will be metal fatigue and failure. 6 months seems to be the magic time before problems begin to occur. Obviously if one rides only on Sundays then this could translate to years but for the every-day biker it quickly equates to a major and costly pain in the bahookie. This is why I will not review Chinese motorbikes and scooters, not because I can’t see the potential but because I wouldn’t wish that agro on anyone. Much in the same way British bikes were plagued by Lucas electronics in days of old, China’s machines are made from bad metal. My opinion. Enough said. Let’s hope they see the light and improve their processes.

Brat Style

Japan - motorcycle - 50cc

Brat Style are a custom shop in Tokyo that produce some of the world’s most radical chops and bobs from a wide range of used Japanese, British and American made machines. Most of their bikes are mid to large displacement with their most popular Stateside seemingly being the XS650, but once in a while they roll out a small-engined mongrel like this awesome Honda R&P chopper-pitbike that’s by all appearances street-legal. Unless you’re extremely well-heeled then getting a genuine Brat Style machine would be prohibitively expensive, however, their website serves as a huge inspirational source for all incumbent and aspiring gearheads so check it out, buy an old $300 beater bearing a “for sale” sign from the side of the road and break out the wrenches! And just a little tip, you want some righteous stuff for your madass cycle?...go to lickscycles.com.

Kikker Hardknock

USA - motorcycle - 125cc

I have never ridden one of these but I dig the concept and geometry. I’ve also seen them in a broad variety of looks, and they have recently introduced a fat-tired 200cc/250cc version though I would want a sturdier frame to offset the torque increase (not to mention that being a solo-seater only the 125cc qualifies as a BRAT). My only reservation (as usual) is the auto clutch/suicide shifter, but I understand the old-school ethos and that production cost necessitates the inexpensive Chinese-built auto-clutch motor. A manual Japanese motor of similar displacement must be salvaged from a used bike (Japanese motorcycle engines cannot be purchased new) so there would be a greater cost involved and doubtless some modifications required to the frame, but as this is sold as a kit (VIN #’s and reg are the customer’s responsibility) you could conceivably bolt on any motor you desired. It is very complicated to build a motorcycle frame from scratch and most frame-builders do not do custom jobs as it requires producing a jig which is cost prohibitive on one-off orders...so...if you want to build a small-displacement custom chopper consider buying this kit and enhancing it with a manual-clutch left-side-shifter bulletproof last-you-a-lifetime engine made in Japan that you've pinched from a secondhand small-displacement dirt or streetbike. Whew, does all that make sense?

Honda FTR

Japan - motorcycle - 250cc

This is Honda brilliance through and through but with a nice naked-flattrackerish imalgamation of dirt & street without being a motard. It rides great, very stable on chunky dual-sport tires, economical on gas and carries a pillion easily with it’s strong tried & tested bulletproof 250 engine. Additionally it doesn’t stand as tall as a motard so you can flatfoot the pavement at stop lights. It also comes in nice colors like this pale slate blue. Again, unfortunately, it has a limited availability worldwide which is puzzling considering the guaranteed appeal this thing would have on the US market. It seems that manufacturers forget the majority of US motorcyclists only travel short distances on their machines; very few bikers are interstaters or trans-ammers and therefore would love the availability of cool looking rides to commute or cafe-hop or take birds home on after scoring at the bar.

POWER:WEIGHT:MPG paradox.

Figuring out how much gasoline a motorcycle will use before we buy it can be quite difficult. Because I’m a regular guy I’m going to try and explain it in my everyman terms. In regular POWER:WEIGHT calculations POWER refers to horsepower and WEIGHT (obviously) to the weight of the machine. By plugging in our motorcycle’s numbers on a chart we get a dependable numerical outcome (that usually only means something to an engineer). But there is no mathematical equation combining POWER (or displacement) and WEIGHT that can predict its MPG. Case in point: a 1200cc 4-cylinder VMax weighing 600lbs with 150hp gets about 35mpg. One might assume that by halfing the engine numbers you’d get double the mileage, that a 650cc 2-cylinder Yamaha V Star at a quarter of the hp should get at least 70mpg! And again, a 250cc Suzuki TU at 20hp should get about 140mpg. Right? Wrong. The V Star gets about 50mpg and the TU about 80mpg. Ok, less than we thought, but the rise in mpg still seems to be about 40% for each time we half the displacement, isn’t that some sort of an equation? With this rule we’d therefore expect a 125cc single-cylinder Honda to get 120mpg. But wrong again, Honda makes a 125cc single-cylinder motorcycle with 8hp (sold only in Asia naturally) that does 60mph and gets 150mpg! I know because I own one. (It also only cost me $1,000 new, but thats another issue.) So there’s an all-too-frequent anomaly that makes us ask, um, why? Basically it’s about engineering. At one end of the scale you have the manufacturers that have barely upgraded their century-old underpowered overweight designs (Harley, Enfield, Triumph) and guzzle gas like there’s no tomale...and at the other end you have rocket scientists like Honda who tweak their motors annually to maximize performance and efficiency. One end is agricultural, the other state of the art. How else could open class races be won by 125cc Japanese bikes when you have monster European and American liter bikes that should by all appearances take home the trophy? How else could you drive your Honda Cub for 200 miles on a gallon of gas? How else could you ride your old Kawa Z900 for 100,000 miles with barely more than oil change for maintenance. How else could you crank your 80cc saki-cycle to 139mph on the Bonneville Flats? Hmmm. Engineering. Manufacturers in Asia know that most of their customers buy their machines for utilitarian purposes and operate on a household budget in countries where oil is not subsidized, and furthermore those customers want to ride those bikes for 20 years and pass them on to their children. Mechanical excellence is the goal or they simply wouldn’t sell. The customer’s always right, remember. So “is it a conspiracy?” you ask. Only in that we are not told by manufacturers about what is not available to us, and we are too ignorant to create the demand. We need to get self-informed about what’s available technologically (as we do with phones and other gadgets) and once we do get smart and start demanding they will produce for us too. Oh, and we have to discard this ridiculous “bigger is better” notion or we’ll soon discover we really missed out on some amazing machines and spent way too much of our hard-earned salaries fueling antiquated ploughs.

ZERO S

USA - motorcycle (auto) - electric (equivalent 250cc)

I have to say, never needing to stop for gas (as long as you keep your rides to 50 miles or under) and the availability of a Federal tax credit + a sales tax discount adds to the appeal of an all electric motorcycle. This from ZERO is an all-round super space age motard (they also do a dirt and dual sport model) on paper looks like a brilliant trend-setter. I have 2 reservations however, lack of clutch and range. A clutch for me is about control and safety, without it I get apprehensive. The ability to disengage the motor from the drivetrain with a simple lever has largely been the appeal of driving/riding since the advent of motorized transport. Secondly, I’m a long-range biker and will sit in the saddle for a 500 mile day without a second thought, only stopping for fuel and re-hydration...what would a high plains drifter like me do if 4-hour breaks were required every 50 miles or so? Battery trading stations would do the trick but would require a one-size-fits-all cell design...doable? If the electric car & bike designers figure out these two issues I’m on board for the latter. Short of that it is a cool looking machine with a very impressive spec sheet - having built bikes from scratch I can see they have cut no corners, this puppy is state-of-the-art and I would love to test-ride one if the opportunity arose. I should postscript and say if I was simply commuting to-and-from work this would be high on my list of choices even at 10k. There should be no expense spared for sparing the environment for our children to enjoy too!

Derbi DH2

Spain - bicycle/motorcycle hybrid - 100cc

This curious little mischief-maker is listed as a “concept” bike on the Derbi website - not sure why when it seems the design & construction are already complete and by and large relatively straight forward. Mountain bike + engine = DH2. It doesn’t get simpler than this and at a proclaimed 88lbs no lighter either. This thing should really shift! However, unless they are aiming at the non-motorcylist market they should bring out a manual version - in it’s current state it’s a bit of a manly virgin - and no gearhead worth his salt is likely to partake. There are some stellar 100cc manual-tranny engines around, most notably the honda CRF, that could turn this thing into a serious cross-country maniac and get 130mpg. This has all the makings of a genuine BRAT, let’s hope Derbi get the finger out.

Suzuki GZ250

Japan/USA - motorcycle - 250cc.

This is an overweight cruiser with a great engine (a Bigboy but with no-kickstart sadly) that would get much better gas-mileage if it’s fatbody were put on a diet. However, it’s a handsome cycle as-is in stock condition and available on the US market for one dollar under $4,000. Trim some extraneous metal for a chop but you gotta keep the two-up seat if you want to qualify for the 125cc per person BRAT ethos! Yeah, great engine, one of the best.

Not always right but always sure.

As I wipe the oily black film of crud from my desk top, screen and keyboard this morning and cough up some phlegm - a daily routine - I am reminded of my loathing of the automobile, how it has choked our planet, how it kills one billion birds and mammals every year (fact) on American roads, how it has changed the topography of our communities with highways that scar and divide, how it removes us from a sense of responsibility as it indiscriminately flattens innocents in it's path. Just yesterday from my balcony I watched two girls on a scooter squashed by a careless driver, it was deemed an accident but had the driver used a gun so recklessly he'd have gotten manslaughter. Someone gets shot and everyone wants to ban handguns, but cars are unrivaled as a dangerous weapon, they rank high under the definition of a WMD and yet no one lobbies for their ban. Yet somehow, mysteriously, they are forgiven for every hazard they wreak. As I write this the Gulf of Mexico is filling up with black gold (and I use the word “gold” to remind us of the collateral damage wrought in it’s mining), poisoning everything in it's path, and as it enters the gulf stream everyone along the coast is crying about the impact on their livelihood, and blaming Britain as if US oil companies don’t have accidents, as if the US didn’t contract the drilling in the first place, as if US citizens aren’t themselves using the oil! For every finger we point, we point 3 back at ourselves. We are all looking for someone to blame as our eastern seaboard dies in front of our eyes, but I'll bet every one of those blamers and moaners drives a car or a truck, so cuss their hypocrisy, they must examine themselves for culpability. It's only the non-car owners who can bitch about this. Car owners feed the greed of companies like BP. Get a bicycle or a BRAT recommended bike and cut your personal oil consumption by 300%. No excuses, now, now, now! I may not always be right but I’m always sure!

Suzuki Grasstracker/Bigboy

Japan - motorcycle - 250cc

The Bigboy version of this is a customiser’s dream. Of all the 250’s is has the best power-to-weight ratio (in part because it uses the engine as a stressed component), a kick/electric start single-cylinder air-cooled engine with a decompression lever that makes for effortless kickstarting, very pretty lines (tank et al) and lots of torque from a dual combustion chambered single pot. I chopped mine down to 100kgs (see Original B.R.A.T.)) and get 20hp of very responsive growl at the throttle. But I also rode her for 3 years as a stocker and never had so much as blip in performance. 10 out of 10.