Adventure / Dual-Sport

When Aprilia initially revealed its revolutionary concept V-twin 450cc off-road powerplant at the Milan Motorcycle Show in 2003, the lightweight, high-tech motor was lacking just one thing—a chassis. Following years of building anticipation from the public, Aprilia has placed the V-twin in the guise of both supermoto (SXV) and enduro (RXV), as well as delivering the engine in two displacements—450cc and 550cc.

Buell Super TT

Buell has an enviable skill of making the most of limited resources. The company clearly isn't set to make each machine completely unique and independent, so they carefully peruse the parts bin to come up with something "new" and interesting. Case in point is the Lightning Super TT, a streetfighter/supermoto hybrid that delivers much more than you might expect at first consideration.

Manor Born

Louis Vuitton—as a purveyor of custom luggage and expensive bags, and owner of elite subsidiaries such as Donna Karan, Veuve Clicquot and Moët & Chandon, Hennessey, Givenchy, and Tag Heuer—is one of Europe's most profitable groups, yet is not too proud to maintain links with the concours and retro-rally scene.

Just as the two Gallery bikes in this issue revolutionized the street motorcycle world over 30 years ago, so too did the 1968 Yamaha DT-1 250 Enduro. The famous white-tanked bike was the first street-legal motorcycle that was also a capable, lightweight, reliable and powerful off-road machine. Yamaha's newly dubbed “dual purpose” motorcycle introduced untold hundreds of thousands to the sport of motorcycle riding, and spawned an entirely new market segment.

Roger Goldammer's simple complexity.

With motocrossers' designs in a maturation phase, the big changes in the dirt are happening off the closed courses. These three bikes reflect that reality.

Certainly every motorcyclist knows something about this motorcycle legend. A 1947 Fourth of July weekend Gypsy Tour gathering of bikers in Hollister, Calif., was embellished by the fanciful imagination of a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and became “4000 Touring Cyclists Wreak Havoc in Hollister.” The story is picked up across the country, culminating with the infamous staged photo of a slovenly, drunken biker in Life magazine, who became our unelected representative. The image was burned into America's collective cornea and we've been dealing with the fallout ever since.

Looking to spend a couple of days playing in the dirt? Well, look no further than MotoVentures. Located just 30 minutes from Temecula, Calif., owner Gary La Plante has 300 acres of private land for you to indulge in everything from Trials to Motocross, as well as taking an extended tour on the dual-sport motorcycle of your choice.

BMW continues to astonish the motorcycling community by pulling ever more impressive rabbits out of its engineering hat. The latest creation from the Munich-based company, and relatively hot on the heels—in engineering and marketing terms—of the revolutionary K bike, is the all new HP2. Designed with the latest off-road technology and engineering, the HP2 (High Performance 2-cylinder) is a serious enduro machine which, as with the introduction of their GS bike some years ago, has BMW setting the bar in a whole new category of motorcycling.

Based on James Stewart's '06 World Supercross Championship-winning KX450F.

BMW R 1200 S 

My introduction to BMW motorcycles occured in the summer of 1975. I was 17 years old and had exuberantly nailed a job at a Honda/BMW dealership, indenturing myself to uncrating motorcycles. A perception of BMW elitism was immediately instilled simply by virtue of how the German machines were boxed up at the factory. Unlike their Japanese counterparts, the BMWs came fully assembled. All that needed to be done was  raise the handlebars and attach the mirrors.

Supermoto Review

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were literally hundreds of companies around the world building motor-cycles, all vying to capitalize on the burgeoning new industry of powered, two-wheel transportation.

Functionally single-minded.

In the late 1990s, Lance Smail was a lone wolf competing in the vaunted AMA Supercross championship series on this Tom Moen-prepared, four-stroke powered KTM. By virtue of being the sole four-stroke in a series populated exclusively by two-stroke machines, Smail and the KTM were instant outsiders. However, at every stadium the bike appeared, the fans went crazy for it. In a field of buzzing, shrieking two-strokes that sounded like agitated bees, the distinctly aggressive thumping of the KTM, with its signature backfire, made it a crowd favorite. (Click image to enlarge)

Triumph's Tiger 955i may present a conundrum for the categorically obsessed. Though tall, narrow and seemingly trail-ready, it is not a dirt bike. The Tiger may be built for comfort, but it is far from a cruiser. And, while minimally terrain flexible, it will never be confused with a dual sport. The Tiger, according to the current zeitgeist of marketing buzzwords, is classified as an adventure touring bike.