Bikes

Ducati released a few pictures of their latest naked sport bike, the Ducati Streetfighter 848.  The motorcycle features an all-new 848 Testastretta 11° engine placed in a chassis that’s made to be agile; perfect for weaving in and out of city traffic or cruising the twisty country back roads.  The bike is designed with user friendliness in mind with revised ergonomics and Ducati Traction Control.

The Ducati Streetfighter was first introduced in 2008 at the Milan show and it won the “Most Beautiful Bike” award.  The 2012 Ducati Streetfighter 848 doesn’t disappoint and is one sexy looking beast!  Other than this, not much information was provided by Ducati regarding the horsepower, price, and other vital statistics.

Back in the day when I first starting riding motorcycles, circa 2002, I wanted a sport bike but since I was a newbie, I didn’t want something too powerful that’ll end up killing me.  There weren’t many any choices for those that liked the look of a modern sport bike but without the power of a 600cc, and higher, bikes.  I ended up buying a Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R, which was a big mistake, a newbie and that kind of power is/was a bad combo, thankfully I made it.

A decade later, there are now a few choices when it comes to less powerful sport bike that still look as good as the bigger bikes and today Kawasaki announced the Ninja 300, but we might be at square one, as Kawasaki hasn’t confirmed North American availability.

My first encounter with Rooke Customs was while watching a TV show a few years, when every TV channel had a custom motorcycle show.  I’m not sure which programme it was but they had Jesse Rooke as a guest builder at the shop and for some reason that team ran out of money.  At the fear of not getting paid fully, Jesse decided to leave the show and let the team figure things out on their own, a pretty douche bag move in my humble opinion.

Anyways, after that display of admirable character by Jesse, I never cared much for him or his bikes until I saw Jesse’s latest creation, the Vettel15.  Normally I wouldn’t cover Rooke’s stuff but since I’m a big fan of Formula 1 and Sebastian Vettel, I decided to give the honorable Mr. Rooke some publicity.

Back in the good ‘ole days, I used to ride a Kawasaki ZX6R Ninja motorcycle. 599 cc was more than enough to get me in all kinds of trouble, but for some people that’s not enough – they want bikes with huge engines.  One of the options for the “bigger is better” crowd is the all-new 2012 Kawasaki ZX-14R, which Kawasaki is calling  “the world’s fastest accelerating bike”.

I can’t imagine how fast this thing would go, but I’d probably end up dead in a week if I bought one.  Kawasaki hasn’t released official power or speed figures but we know this bike will be super-fast.  The 2012 ZX-14R will feature throttle-by-wire and traction control (a good idea) for the first time, with three different settings that can be controlled from the handle bar with gauge cluster indicator lights.

This entire summer I was looking for cool motorcycles to write about but only found one (I think) and now that summer is pretty much over (at least in the northern hemisphere), I find myself writing three articles on motorcycles in a couple of days; just in time for the wet, snowy, and nasty weather- isn’t life ironical (I didn’t know ironical was a word, I thought I was being smart but spell checker didn’t give me any grief).

Today we bring you yet another Kawasaki motorcycle but this one is a bit more substantial than the Ninja 300, it’s downright mean looking and looks ready to eat a few Ninja 300’s for breakfast.