Winter break continues at the NYC edition of the International Motorcycle Show, Happy Holidays all! - dc
The smooth ride provided by RSBFS continued as I received a press credential for the last Progressive International Motorcycle Show of 2015, their ten-city tour almost half complete. Didn't see Flo, but there were a lot of folks in Progressive colors, kudos to them for sponsoring and welcoming the media before the crowds...
There would soon be a custom bike on each carpet pad and about a thousand people in this aisle.
It had been a good walk over from Penn Station and there was coffee and muffins and a short welcome from the Progressive show managers. A full day of presentations by manufacturers was in store, the girls in blue and white herding us from stop to stop. Fortunately they had gotten the memo about motorcyclists being free spirits and we were able to wander a bit as there was plenty to catch the eye.
Royal Enfield was the first stop, they are organizing a US dealer network and have a new cafe racer model, the Continental GT. Showing a flat black custom treatment done by the importer, they are go for launch on the retro craze.
I detoured through the KTM display on the way across the show floor, their RC390 single and RC Cup were at the front of the booth, but I found the 1290 Super Duke R Special Edition pretty captivating.
Triumph showed only the Bonnevilles, in every variation. The 900 and 1200cc twins are going to leave a bruise in the other retro hopefuls, especially when their Scrambler arrives mid-2016.
Honda had a lot to say about their side-by-sides but eventually focused on the RC-213V-S which at $184,000, if we could sleep in it would almost make sense. Conceptually hard to beat a street legal GP machine. They neglected to even mention the merely incredible CBR-1000RR.
The Africa Twin is back after a long respite, they brought along one of the originals, so cool.
Cutaways were my treat of the event - R1 above, ZX-10R below. $15K gets you a great deal of engineering these days.
For all the yawns awarded the Victory brand, they deserve a great deal of credit for their prototype-engined Pikes Peak entrant and a production-engined custom built by an Austrian drag racing champ ( I know you don't see those words together very often ). The factory flew Urs Erbacher in for the show and he spoke very well about the project and the company.
Suzuki has a comprehensively revised GSX-R in the works but the 1986 race bike was the gem at their display.
Ducati had a beautiful pavilion with all the Superbikes, Multis, Hypers, Diavels, and Monsters, and a separate deck for the Scramblers, but my pick was the "little" 959 Panigale.
Yamaha must've commissioned an additional race bike for every racer they sponsored, as they were real and perfect.
The R3 looked very do-able especially with Graves options and colors.
And celebrating their 60th with a momentary return to the old winning colors.
Hard to compete with Indian for chrome, pastels, and suede fringe, especially as they are now backed with Polaris engineering. Hats off to Indian for sponsoring a veterans' ride to Sturgis, and this year they will be supplying a number of trikes.
BMW wound up the morning with their duplex exhibit, but didn't show the 310R I wanted to see, as it won't be out until later 2016. Here a K1300S and a Nine-T custom.
I had to bail before lunch and missed Friday afternoon's festivities, but was able to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and ride in Sunday morning to see the rest, this time with mob, plus the vendor area.
I spoke to two innovators - BikeMinds ( .com ) does some pre-shopping for accessories and also allows you to share your customizations with others. Fusar has a helmet camera which interfaces with your phone, one of the features being a recording of the most recent minute of video until you press a handlebar mounted "save" button to store a cool event or maybe an incident.
Sadly the organizers ended the free bike parking, as one of the security guards told me, " because people keep blowing s*** up", but I was able to wedge the ST4S in between a full dresser and a police car, all within easy reach of a fire hydrant. Rode down to 25th and 9th to meet my friends for a late lunch and took advantage of the recent mid-street parking - 9th Avenue now has a bicycle lane, island parking, a travel lane, a bus lane, what seems to be a double-parking lane, and parking on the right. Slow, but it's still a kick to ride in Manhattan. In December...
-donn