While most of Japan’s motorcycle manufacturers have taken the cautious approach to riding out the global recession—making minimal updates to existing models, building low-buck econobikes or otherwise hitting the snooze button—Kawasaki is wide awake with the throttle pinned. In the last three years we’ve seen a recession-defying number of new models. They include the ZX-10R, which remains the only open-class Japanese bike to have been completely reworked in the past 36 months, and was the first to come with traction control; the 2011 Ninja 1000, a reasonably priced sportbike for the real world; the 2012 ZX-14R, which simultaneously rehashed and squashed the decade-old horsepower feud with Suzuki’s Hayabusa; the totally reworked 2012 Ninja 650; and the all-new, fuel-injected 2013 Ninja 300. And, finally, the 2013 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R.

Nobody needs to explain these things. They’re hot-rods, and any hot-rod worthy of the name speaks a universal language. Visual. Powerful. Visceral. Loud. Hopefully cool, and above all, quick. From its origins on the dry lakebeds of 1930s Southern California, it's a language that has been redefined and retranslated countless times with consistently inconsistent results. Some look better than they work. Others have the opposite effect. Where Ducati’s Diavel and Yamaha's Star V-Max slot in depends on your personal performance aesthetic. But despite striking physical and philosophical differences, they are two ways of saying the same thing boys and—if they’re really honest— girls have been saying since fifth grade: I’m stronger/faster/quicker/cooler than you.

It's judgement Day - or so the billboards around Southern Tenneessee keep reminding us - and here we are just beginning our comparison of the all-new BMW K1600GTL and Honda's freshly updated GL1800. We've been waiting years for the Germans to replace the old K1200LT, and now that we finally have the new challenger and the Gold Wing on the road together, the last thing we need is an apocalypse!

Blink and you’ll miss it. There’s not much to see even if you’re looking: just another tangled ribbon of dirt or broken, weedy pavement winding away from a forgettable country two-lane. Maybe there’s a weathered, wooden sign with some cryptic Forest Service cipher like 7N01 or 6N24. Maybe there’s only a rutted break in the underbrush. Either way, you’ve blown by hundreds of them en route to somewhere else. But from the seat of the right motorcycle, you can spot a good one 100 yards away. Because right around that bend, just out of sight, is a little slice of heaven.

MC COMPARISON
Aprilia RSV4 Factory APRC SE
BMW S1000RR
Ducati 1198SP
Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R

The 250cc sportbike segment has never exactly teemed with choices. For years there was just one: Kawasaki’s ubiquitous Ninja 250. Then, in 2005, the class size doubled when Hyosung entered the American market with its GT250R. Now, with the introduction of Honda’s new CBR250R, the options list is at an all-time high of three, confronting neophytes and other would-be buyers with a multiple-choice challenge they’ve never faced before.

What is sport-touring anyway? Riding a little too fast and a little too far on roads you haven’t ridden in way too long. It’s too much bruschetta and gnocchi con pesto at Caffe Lucio. Laughing way too loud over pints of Moretti draft afterward, staying up too late debating Vale vs. Casey and Latigo Canyon vs. Ice Cream Grade. Waking up light-years from the corporate pressure-cooker in a motel bed, washing down a breakfast-buffet waffle with industrial-grade coffee and rolling out into the brittle, early-morning chill to do it all over again.

Successful niches have a way of becoming mainstream. That's why there's a beer-brewing kit in my closet and naked bikes at your local dealership. While naked-bike enthusiasts used to build their own out of necessity, stripped-down sportbikes are now a staple of nearly every manufacturer's lineup. Riders are clamoring for a do-it-all machine that's powerful, comfortable, versatile and agile. The new "nearly nakeds" provide a middle ground that approaches ideal.

They are as different as any pair of tools designed for the same job can be. Sharpened by three decades of going places that would make most street riders wet themselves, BMW's GS is the original choice for going just about anywhere two wheels can take you. Undeniably huge, inimitably German and currently defined by a stronger twin-cam version of the 1170cc Boxer-twin, the R1200GS looks like an adventure sitting still. Just add 21 contiguous vacation days, a clean American Express card and shake vigorously.

Electric vehicles are nothing new. The first battery-powered transports appeared in the 1890s, and for a while were favored over internal-combustion automobiles because they were quieter, cleaner and easier to operate. More than a century later, EVs are reemerging for the very same reasons, and this time motorcycles are included in the ranks.

Baggers-the bastard children of a cruiser and a full-dress tourer-are big business. Distinguished by saddlebags and full fairings, and built for stylish over-the-road travel, they're the most popular subset of the massive cruiser market. Harley-Davidson doesn't disclose sales by model, but even a cursory curbside survey says baggers are Milwaukee's best-selling bikes. It seems every second Harley you see is a Street Glide. Victory isn't as tight-lipped-the all-new Cross Country bagger is already by far its best-selling touring model. The Minnesota-based company reports that buyers range from 26 to 72 years in age, hinting at baggers' broad appeal.

Forget about PIIGS, or any other overseas currency crisis-this is the kind of Euro bailout we can get behind. In a season when Japan's motorcycle industry is on lockdown, recycling last year's sportbikes, Europe's top manufacturers have stepped up with some seriously hot machinery.

Like any of us who've been around for a while, Honda's VFR has changed. Meet one on the street and you'd never guess it was once the VF750F that tossed the sportbike world on its collective head in 1983. There's no hint of Fred Merkel's '85 AMA Superbike Championship, Wayne Rainey's five-straight wins in '86, or the 190-mph RC45 that won eight of 10 races under Miguel DuHamel in '95. Look closely and you can catch a glint of the broadband '98 VFR800. But beyond that three-letter prefix and its basic engine configuration, this VFR bears no resemblance to its illustrious ancestors.

For their latest liter-class superbikes, Aprilia and Yamaha decided to do things a little differently. Yamaha's Crossplane crankshaft breaks with tradition by positioning the YZF-R1's crankpins at 90-degree intervals, reducing crank-speed fluctuations for more fluid power delivery and improved rear-wheel traction. Aprilia shunned the inline-four arrangement from the beginning, opting to pair the RSV4R's cylinders and splay them at a narrow 65 degrees. Yamaha's improvements to the 2009 R1 earned it our Motorcycle of the Year award and the World Superbike Championship. Aprilia's clean-sheet creation was so strong that it put the Italian manufacturer on the podium nine times after a seven-year hiatus from the world stage. Clearly, being different can be a very good thing.

Shiftless. Clutchless. Stepless. Seamless. Clueless? This just in: The idea of a transmission that picks the perfect ratio is hardly a new one. A particularly bright guy by the name of Leonardo da Vinci cooked up the concept of a continuously variable transmission in 1490. With a few notable exceptions-the 1910 Zenith V-2, 1976 Moto Guzzi Convert and 1978 CB750A Hondamatic, to name a few-most modern motorcycles expect us to shift for ourselves. Most, that is, except for the Aprilia Mana 850 and Honda DN-01. And while the purist contingent may argue whether the plastic-wrapped DN-01 is actually a motorcycle at all, one look tells you it's about as far from the Mana as Aprilia's Noale headquarters are from Honda's in Tokyo.

I always hated being married to a celebrity. Especially in the early '90s when he was really hot. When I met Perry King, he played Cody Allen on ABC's Riptide. He was all mustache and muscles. I couldn't take him anywhere without a full-faced helmet.

These two beauties have a lot in common. Aimed at beginners, they both use mild-mannered, 650cc twin-cylinder engines packaged in light-handling chassis. Power and weight are in the same ballpark, as is price: just $6399 for Kawasaki's ER-6n and $6899 for Suzuki's Gladius. On paper, the two are almost indistinguishable. Stray from the spec sheets, however, and the differences start to overshadow the similarities.

Forty years ago, America was in crisis. Bodies piled up in Vietnam, while rioters burned down Chicago and Washington D.C. Martin Luther King's dream died in Memphis. Robert F. Kennedy's too, in Los Angeles. The Manson Family, and the Hell's Angels at Altamont, extinguished any remaining Aquarian-age idealism. It was against this chaotic backdrop that Wyatt and Billy, two drug-dealing hippies named after cowboys, set out on iron horses to find what was left of the American Dream. Flush with dirty money from one last big score, they headed for Florida to retire but ended up dead in a ditch. The '60s were over, man, and the film Easy Rider, premiering in July 1969, was the decade's epitaph.

Honda offers Combined Anti-Lock Brakes (C-ABS) on the 2009 CBR600RR, which we covered in our April issue. But how does it compare to the non-ABS version? Can a skilled rider out-brake the computer? The editors at our sister magazine Sport Rider wondered the same thing, so tested the two CBRs side by side. Here's what they found...

Down here in Mexico, you can smell a good taco stand a mile away. You can also smell a bad one. That's the trouble. Get into a sizeable town like Ensenada and that's about all you smell. If you're lucky: We're here swilling tequila and test-driving tacos because our Kawasaki KLR650 shredded its rear tube on Baja's debris-laden Highway 1. Try finding an extra 17-incher on Sunday in a shanty town. My boyfriend Mauricio already survived a drive up into the hills with a couple locals. He was offered a prostitute and drugs, but somehow, miraculously, came back with a patchable 21-inch tube instead. Too much rubber for a long day on the rim, but good enough to get the KLR and its BMW G650GS contender safely to a hotel somewhere up the road. What was it that Trip Advisor mentioned about the Casa Devertidas?

Surrounded by the leaner, greener, subcompact sensibilities of 2009, a tiny voice cries out from the back of the gearhead cortex: "Bigger is better. Nothing exceeds like excess." That little voice holds these truths to be self-evident. All motorcycles are not created equal, and big, fast ones are generally the way to go. Following the crowd just means waiting in a longer line for brats and Bud, so don't. Basic 45-degree OHV pushrod orthodoxy isn't the only way to big twin nirvana. There are more than a few alternatives to the brand that made Milwaukee famous. Some are bigger. Some are stronger. Some are faster. Some are all of that.

In this corner, weighing in at 700 pounds, sequel to the hardest-hitting two-wheeled hot rod on the street, armed with a 1679cc liquid-cooled V-4 that's the biggest puncher in the game. Back by popular demand, the people's choice: the Star V-Max. In that corner, the challenger, a 578-lb. stick-and-move journeyman puncher packing 1340cc of inline-four Hayabusa muscle, from Hamamatsu, Japan by way of Planet Cybertron: the Suzuki B-King.

Last October on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno asked comedian Katt Williams what he thought about the downturn in the U.S. economy. "We're going into a recession, America," Williams said. "Buy yourself something nice before it happens."

Forget what the brochures say. These aren't supermoto bikes. Not supermoto as in supermotard, as in the French fusion of roadracing and motocross run on go-kart tracks with some dirt and a jump thrown in to keep things interesting. For the most part, they're crafty exercises in niche marketing. Naked twins dressed up to emulate the sort of thing Benny Carlson and Mark Burkhart back into corners for a living.

R-model Ducatis have traditionally been the flagships in Ducati's range. And they've carried the price tags to match. The previous-generation, $30,000 999R was one of our favorite motorcycles, with tractability, suspension and steering precision that let it rival much more powerful four-cylinder literbikes. The $40,000 1098R doesn't just rival them; it leaves them for dead.