ALL THINGS MOTORCYCLE

"NAKED" KATANA-STYLE "SUZUKI STRATOSPHERE" CONCEPT AN OLDIE AND GOODIE

Remember "naked motorcycles"? The styling was developed to make motorcycles appear more purposeful, like "applied art with a practical purpose", as some people have said about race cars, which are recognizable as cars, but stripped down to their basics. You could also say the style helped motorcycles "look fast standing still", a statement used to describe some sporty cars and real sports cars. The style uncovered as much of a bike's frame and engine as possible, so it appeared as sort of a 'skeleton' with an engine in its low middle and a wheel at either end. A look at such a bike showed-off its individual parts, including even much of the swing arm and rear suspension set-up. The look was all the rage, especially with Japanese-made machines, back in the early part of this century. Now Suzuki is re-re-releasing photos and info on what must be one of their favorite motorcycle concepts of all time, the Stratosphere concept from the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show, an 1100cc monster with an Inline 6-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. (Photo - Cutaway of the Inline-6 which powered the Stratosphere).

Always one of the best exhibits at the Tokyo Motor Show is that of the motorcycles. If a journalist writes about the motorcycles displayed there, you know that he or she spent a lot of extra time and trouble in covering the show during the two press days, which works out to a total of about only 16 hours to see the entire show, shoot photos, do interviews and somehow be able to explain it all, vehicle-by-vehicle, when they get back home.

The building where the Tokyo planners put the motorcycles (and this past year, the 2007 show, also most of the busses and trucks which were on display again for the first time in about a decade) is a several hundred yard walk from the main building at Makuhari Messe, where the cars are on display. The walk is up and down some huge flights of "decorative concrete" stairs, and if you've saved the bikes for the last couple of hours on the final media day, one thing you don't feel at all like doing is walking on more hard surfaces. But hey, it's a job, and usually doesn't necessitate much heavy lifting, so who are we to complain, right? But patting ourselves on the back a bit, we do have on this site extensive Tokyo motorcycle coverage from both the 2005 and 2003 shows in the form of Photo Albums ... Check the left-hand margin for those albums (we had some digital tech troubles while covering the 2007 show, and didn't have the time to make the fixes we needed in time shoot the bikes, but we did take a slow walk through the gigantic hall, taking notes and creating some 'mental pictures' to help us get the facts straight when we got home).

BMW's HP2 BIKE; GRAND TRADITIONS OF ENGINEERING, STYLING AND HORSEPOWER IN SEVERAL MARKETPLACES COMBINED

BMW began as an aircraft engine and auto parts builder; motorcycles and then, complete cars, all came a bit later. In fact, following the use of various colors and images as a corporate logo, the blue and white BMW logo (or "roundel", which is also the name of the BMW Car Club of America magazine) is a representation of a plane's rotating propeller and was registered in December, 1917 (all of that info is always good for winning a bar bet). BMW counts for a lot of motorcycle 'firsts', perhaps the most-important of the modern age was being first to offer anti-lock brakes on a two-wheeler (in 1987 on the K100 Mark II), followed-up with ASC, Automatic Stability Control, in K- and R-series bikes in 2007. With all the excitement about the high-horsepower BMW 1-series coming into the US, a lot of people forget that, while the company makes, for the most part, truly fantastic, if heavily-priced, automobiles, they have often used their motorcycle division as a 'test bed' for engine and suspension parts which eventually found their way into the four-wheeled versions of BMW (the same can be said for Yamaha, whose "Genesis" cylinder heads have found their way in some form or another into Toyota and other engines, as well as Honda using their bike-developed engine tech in their automotive division). In fact, BMW spent many of its earliest years as a parts-maker for the then-new aircraft and automobile industries. One of the company's founders, Gustav Otto, was the son of Nikolaus August Otto, inventor of the four-stroke internal combustion engine. Let us remind you to 'double click' on the photos to really appreciate them. (Photo - 2008 BMW HP2).

BMW motorcycles have always been highly-appreciated by customers who value reliability, top-end horsepower mated with big low-end torque, liquid-cooling, interesting and even, lately, outrageous styling, and aficionados aren't afraid to reach deep into their pockets (and pocketbooks) to bring one home. For instance, BMW was the first motorcycle manufacturer to offer a cockpit fairing as standard equipment in 1973 on the R 90 S, today considered a revolutionary sport bike. In 1976, BMW's R 100 RS was the first production motorcycle fitted with a wind tunnel developed fairing. That worldwide BMW bike audience enjoys the theory and the reality of a "Boxer" horizontally-opposed engine; used by BMW (in their motorcycles, only), Porsche and Subaru cars, the engines have proven tough and extremely dependable.

2008 SUZUKI GSX-R MACHINES; UK DETAILS, AVAILABILITY AND PRICING

There are reasons to appreciate PR releases from every country, as they all have something special, something found in their use of English, sometimes tortured (check the releases from Chinese car companies, which are almost as bad as the early releases from Japan) and they are sometimes veddy, veddy British. We love getting press releases from UK-based outfits. We're happy to share them in their entirety with all our English-language visitors because there's something about the Brit's use of the language, the "Queen's English", I think they call it, which, frankly, makes whatever they're writing or saying sound much more interesting than it would be if it had been written or said by some American PR squid in, say, Torrance, California ... Which is home to both American Honda and Toyota Motor Sales, USA.