The Last Word Archives - Page 2 of 5

The Future of MotoGP?

Last year, I created something of a hullabaloo when I postulated that Honda or Yamaha — or, in a worst-case scenario, both — might quit MotoGP. Both had seemingly given up on racing, barely...

Electric Vehicle Ban

A racetrack in rural Wales, the Anglesey Trac Môn Circuit, just became the first in the United Kingdom to ban electric vehicles. More important, at least to this column, is that Anglesey’s ban...

Superbike History

It is almost axiomatic that the heyday of any technology dependent sport, particularly any form of motorsport that involves internal combustion, is its very beginning. No one, not even the most...

Out With The Old, In With The New?

It turns out that middleweight sport bikes didn’t die. They just got boring. To those of us bikers long in our years, one of the most glaring changes — besides the advent of 170-horsepower dirt...

Morality Play

So sorry to do this to you, but this month’s column will be a morality play. Like so much of today’s politics, sports are being divided by conflicting calls for equality and equity. Now, one...

Ego and Strife in MotoGP

It’s hard not to notice how badly Japanese manufacturers are doing in MotoGP of late. Suzuki, of course, has already abandoned ship, Honda has a motorcycle no one but Marc Marquez — and he, only...

Jump Control

Honda’s most recent technological announcement no doubt stirred up some serious controversy. Or, if you haven’t yet heard about Honda’s latest electronic safety nanny, it may be about to stir...

How Far We’ve Come

A little more than a month ago, an example of the world’s first gasoline-fuelled production motorcycle sold at a Bonhams auction. This particular 1894 Hildebrand and Wolfmüller, engine number 69,...

Fuel of the Future?

Some motorcycle manufacturers are finally saying out loud what many have silently thought for some time: For full-sized motorcycles, batteries will not be the near-term future. Triumph’s Steve...

The New Parallel-Twin

Somewhere between the time Honda introduced its torsion springed CB450 in 1965 and when the last Triumph Bonneville rolled off the Meriden production line in 1983, the parallel-twin became...

Shipping Your Bike?

‘Tis the season when the adventurous start dreaming of horizons distant. Tierra del Feugo. The Gobi Desert. Or, if you’re one sixty-something Motorcycle Mojo writer, the Stelvio Pass. Having...

Batteries Still Have a Long Way to Go

This column goes out to all the engineers out there, armchair or otherwise, who, like me, try to make sense of a complicated world through the deciphering of numbers. The subject for today’s...