Wpg Canada Automobile Information
In Grand Prix racing, the class to watch in recent years has been 250cc, where— unlike the limited field that exists in 500cc racing— the races are more spectacular and there has been a wide variety of machines. The current favorite in the 250cc class is the Italian Luca Cadalora. World 125cc champion in 1986 [...]
Oct 28, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
The Gold Wing 1500/6 is the biggest, most lavishly equipped and one of the most expensive two-wheelers in the world. Aimed squarely at the US market, it has a flat-six engine- just like a Porsche!- displacing 1520cc, the biggest power unit currently in production. Honda was already planning a six-cylinder superbike as early as 1972, [...]
Oct 25, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
The Big Four of the Japanese motorcycle industry (Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Honda) are engaged in a butter struggle for technological supremacy. The majority has chosen to produce mass-market. Yamaha offers the 1000 FZR, Kawasaki has its 750 ZXR-R and Suzuki- with models like the 250 RGV- markets replicas of its Grand Prix racers. Honda, [...]
Oct 22, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
First run in 1874 and dominated since 1983 by the faster and more flexible twin-cylinder bikes, the Paris-Dakar rally has always been the field of a bitter battle between twins and single-cylinder machines. It’s a situation in which the singles— even if they haven’t won- have always performed better overall. The final development of the [...]
Yamaha, the youngest of the “Big Four” Japanese motorcycle manufacturers, didn’t build its first two-wheeler until 1954, when it unveiled a copy of the DKW RT 125, calling it the Ya1. This spidery autocycle was a great success. It won handily the first cinder track hill climb ever held at Mount Asama, north of Tokyo, [...]
Oct 16, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
One of the most durable survivors of Sixties culture is the Chopper, a peculiar American phenomenon whose very nature defies logic; it is the symbol of a way of life that thumbs its nose at conventional standards. The genuine article, low-slung chopper, like this Harley-Davidson-based bike, goes beyond mechanical belief; the rule is to be [...]
Oct 13, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
The race for technological supremacy was at its height at the beginning of the Eighties multicylinder, multivalve engines were all the rage, and the latest novelty was the turbocharger. Costly, and often imperfectly engineered, the turbo proved a flash in the pan, but that didn’t prevent the best of the turbo bikes from acting as [...]
Oct 10, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
Having struggled against each other in a bizarre quest for ultra-sophistication, the Japanese manufacturers have rediscovered the importance of making bikes that are both simple and affordable. Among the latest in the scene is the Yamaha Seca, which went on the market at the end of 1991 at a seemingly unbeatable price. About 30 percent [...]
Oct 07, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
At the end of the Eighties, bikes had become inaccessible. The average enthusiast simply couldn’t lay his hands on one of these hyper styled chunks of misplaced ingenuity. As the decade ended, escalating prices and lack of consumer interest had plunged the Japanese and American two-wheeler markets into disarray. Feeling the ground shift under them, [...]
In the Sixties, the Japanese factories- bent on the conquest of Europe- launched themselves into a crazy technological scramble for the winter’s circle in the world racing championship. Until the band in 1967 on 50cc and 125cc engines with more than two cylinders and more than four cylinders in the larger displacements, Honda championed the [...]
Oct 01, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post
