Conjuring make-believe motorcycles is the pabulum of a fitful night's sleep and the preoccupation of the cocktail napkin scribbler. The fog of sleeplessness makes everyone a prophet; a douse of whiskey makes everyone an expert. In spite of the number of brilliant motorcycles on the showroom floor, motorcyclists, one can safely assume, will never stop wondering "what if." What if Harley built a scrambler? What if Ducati built a new Supermono? What if BMW supercharged a boxer?
Dotted yellow lines disappear from sight beneath your left grip as motion becomes miles. If the motorcyclist’s soul is transient, then his mind is a vagrant. No wonder it flits from fake bike to fake bike with the same abandon as the body moves across state lines.
For the wandering mind of the wandering soul, here’s a list of dream bikes to ride down imaginary roads. Whether they spawned from sleeplessness or the drink, who’s to say?
I'm typically not one for custom bikes that veer too far functionally from their designer's intent. Often they're too form-over-function for my tastes. Knobby tires and bark busters on a Gold Wing do not an ADV make. However, the LC Fabrications Dirtster and the Biltwell Frijole 883 make very strong cases for flipping off rationality and turning The Motor Company's tried-and-true twin over to the gods of dirt and destruction. With the popularity of scramblers right now, Harley's charmingly rumbly 883/1200 Evolution motor is just begging to be put on stilts and pitted against the rest of the new-school scrambling pretenders. I, for one, would gladly do a BDR on it.
Before World War II put a halt to motorcycle racing development—and just about everything else filled with sunshine and happiness—supercharging was beginning to take hold. Exhibit A: the BMW RS 255 Kompressor on which Georg Meier won the 1939 Senior TT. A production Kompressor would be an ode to BMW’s two-wheeled racing past and a genuinely unique motorcycle in today’s market. I’m picturing an air-/oil-cooled boxer twin with bespoke supercharger in a beefed up R NineT chassis, classic black and white livery, and go-fast goodies from the usual suspects. It would be a formula for speed liberated from the shackles of objective numbers and the boundaries of racing classes.
Just as Ducati beat Honda to the V-4 superbike punch, Suzuki looks to be doing the same thing to our Bolognese friends by aping Claudio Domenicali's brilliant design for a single-cylinder engine. It's unclear what destination Suzuki intends for its unconventional thumper, but even if goes into a sportbike and has fairings as graceful as Terblanche's design ("unimaginable," many of us would exclaim), it won't say "Supermono" on the sides, that's for sure. For years, we've been daydreaming Ducati would take a 1299 Superquadro engine and give it the Supermono treatment. Would Ducatisti pay Panigale V4 R money for a limited-number, super-trick mono with a carbon-fiber monoscocca frame and the latest electronics? Of course they would. Contest it in the Lightweight TT and bring back Ducati glory to the Island. Just picture it. It's enough to bring a tear to the eye.
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The “Ready to Race” brand doesn’t have an RC-anything in the lineup at the moment, which is a great shame, but we’d also love to see KTM expand its sport-touring GT offerings as well. The Super Duke GT is probably one of the great unsung heroes of the motorcycle world. A slightly more civilized 1290 Super Duke equipped for long distances? What’s not to like? KTM’s lineup is filled with touring ADVs, but they can seem a bit “much” if sport-touring is the main objective. But the SD GT is expensive and has a face only a mother could love. We think extending its sport-touring genes to the 790 platform would be awesome. If the price point was commensurate to the 790 Adventure and Adventure R—$12,500 and $13,500 respectively—it would be an enticing option for those who don’t want the off-road pretense of a 21-inch front tire.
Although the rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated, the Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa is badly in need of an update. We know Suzuki had been playing around with some small-capacity supercharged designs, but maybe an H3 killer would be the way to go. If natural aspiration is more plausible, we’d be happy to see a capacity hike and the GSX-R1000’s so-obvious-it’s-brilliant ramp and ball design for variable valve timing.
The RC213V-S is the closest thing to a production MotoGP bike ever built, but with a lackluster 14,000-rpm rev limit and even with the not-available-in-the-US power kit installed, it's—as Kevin Cameron points out—not even at a WorldSBK level of trim. The bike doesn't so much comb the depths of Honda's technical know-how as scale the heights of its quality hand-built production. Who wouldn't love to see Honda build a costs-no-object halo bike for the 21st century? An NR750 for the new millennium, if you will. It doesn't have to have oval pistons, but it should represent the furthest reaches of Honda engineers' wildest dreams. It should be our wildest dreams. If it takes shoving the bean counters off the roof for Honda to flex its muscles, then so be it. Soichiro would approve.
The Varese, Italy, marque is best known for its three- and four-cylinder machines, with which it won 37 constructor’s championships. In the late 1950s, chasing higher revs, MV briefly campaigned a six-cylinder 350 and a 500 to little success. Today, as MV moves toward financial stability and is developing a new four-cylinder platform, the failed six-cylinder experiment is probably the furthest thing from its mind. But for those of us with peripatetic imaginations, a Varese-built open-class bike with a rev limit as high as the nearby sacred mounts is enough to inspire a daydream we’d be happy to get lost in for a while. But to be honest, a new four-cylinder motor is enough to titillate, so when that comes along, no doubt it will satiate our silver and red dreams.
Yamaha’s Leaning Multiwheel tech offers exceptional stability and front-end grip. Off road, where stability and grip come at a premium, mastery over the two would be very welcome. For street riders, the fear of losing the front in the dirt can be hard to shed. With more suspension travel, larger front tires, and a purpose-built frame, a Niken ADV could be the gateway to crossing it up in ruts and throwing it sideways on gravelly fire roads. Or it could be terrible. If Yamaha would like volunteer test riders, they can count on me.
What make-believe bikes are you dreaming about? Comment below.
