This week we have a couple of unusual chats for you. In the first segment, Senior Editor Nic de Sena talks to Arthur Coldwells about the new Ohvale GP2 mini bike. This is a full race machine that is scaled down to work on kart tracks, and yet it is designed to give a rider the full racebike experience. The Ohvale is not a toy and many, many professional racers use one to enhance their skillset and help with their training.
The second segment comes to you from the recent Barber Vintage Festival, held annually at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds Alabama. George Barber himself was kind enough to spare a few minutes to chat about the new Advanced Design Center project that has been created on the top floor of the museum. Ably headed up by Brian Case of Motus Motorcycles fame, George Barber’s Design Center is there to encourage and explore design. He has generously outfitted the center with every type of creative and production tool you can imagine, including a couple of high end 3D printing machines, and full clay-modelling capability. Brian Case has already collaborated with ex-Ducati designer Pierre Terblanche and their first project—done remotely with Pierre residing at home in South Africa I might add—is a modern take on the exquisite early 90s Ducati Super Mono, designed at the time by Pierre. The Advanced Design Center is a heck of a project and George Barber is justifiably proud of it. It is there to encourage and explore design, especially with young people who perhaps do not have the means to really explore their ideas or turn them into reality. If you’re a designer with some ideas, please feel free to contact Brian Case at the Barber Advanced Design Center and talk to him about perhaps starting you off, or taking you to the next step in your career. His contact information is below.
