alanB
Grey Hound
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2010
- Messages
- 6,776
- Reaction score
- 10
- Location
- Johannesburg
- Bike
- Husqvarna (all models)
I made a statement this morning that drew some flak about BMW bikes and their lack of racing heritage :
It threatened to side track a good thread so I desisted promptly.
But thought I would expand my thoughts a bit here because it does worry me quite a lot given that BMW have now bought Husky.
BUT THIS IS NOT A KTM VS BMW OR ANY OTHER MINDLESS BRAND BASHING THREAD so keep those comments out of it please.
My point is simply this.
If you have a division of whatever bike manufacturer (lets not be brand specific) which makes its living out of selling bikes to the racing market. Your design team has very real and harsh constraints placed upon it. Its no good having a fantastic marketing team and great ads and life style walk-in centres etc if your bikes are not competitive and lose too often. Because then your target market (people who race), are not going to buy your bikes and you will go out of business. So your designers have to design with great care ensuring good reliable bikes that produce results, which are easy to ride fast, don't break down, are light and powerful.
Racing bikes thus have a purity of design like no others. Everything on them is there for a purpose. Anything which doesn't work is quickly eliminated. Anything which causes the bike to break during a race is sorted out. Equipment supplied with the bike is fit for purpose etc etc. WEIGHT IS CONSTANTLY MINIMISED. Anything that adversely affects performance is revised. Over time what emerges from a few generations of bike models are tried and tested designs that provide a very high level of performance and reliability. The XR650R is great example of this.
Now to me, if your racing division can build up a deep level of experience and expertise in that field then you can use that experience to build solid DS bikes that really deliver on their promise. To keep following that example, the XR650L is another great example of how Honda use their race experience to build a good bike that offers great bang for your bucks.
OEM's who have no racing division, or who ignore them when developing their DS designs will lose that purity of design and over time will start building bikes that are bloated and in which bling and image is more important than function and performance and which cant actually do what they are supposed to do that well. ie The marketing department will start dictating design instead of the harsh rules of competitive racing, using arguments like "how many people are actually going to ride up Jock Strap pass" etc.
But I feel strongly that in DS biking in particular, it is of great benefit having a DS bike which has a racing heritage. Especially given the fact that a large portion of DS riding is supposed to be off road and then good suspension, handling and low weight make a big difference then. If you are not Daryl Curtis it actually is even more important to have a bike like that because it will make it easier for you to ride bad terrain than something that was never really intended for that.
A lot of people dismiss racing as something extreme that is only for wild risk takers that have a death wish and whose bikes are expensive to maintain etc etc. Some of that is true but a lot of that perception is not. Racing bikes tend to be well designed (they have to be as I explained above) are simple and easy to maintain, don't have large amounts of unnecessary stuff on them, are hardy and don't suffer unnecessary damage in falls etc. It is true that sometimes the engines are highly strung and need short maintenance intervals but if one adapts a racing bike to become a DS bike at design stage that is easily addressed (compare the Husky 610 to Husky 450 for eg). The bike that emerges tends to be very nice to ride and does most things well. Its a great platform for a DS bike!
Now its true you can go and have an adventure on anything, even a Vespa, but if you are going ride off road terrain then I would prefer something designed with that deep understanding of what it takes to build a good off-road bike. If you don't really care what your bike is capable of then it actually doesn't matter what bike you buy, anything will do - fair enough.
Some of us do care about what bike we buy so, hence my point is I think its very important that a DS bike manufacturer has a deep off road racing back ground and this SHOULD result in a great range of DS bikes that are light, give good performance, handle well and are reliable. This applies of course to the off-road part of DS bike design but my point is that its far easier to make an off-road oriented bike acceptable on tar, than the reverse.
It threatened to side track a good thread so I desisted promptly.
But thought I would expand my thoughts a bit here because it does worry me quite a lot given that BMW have now bought Husky.
BUT THIS IS NOT A KTM VS BMW OR ANY OTHER MINDLESS BRAND BASHING THREAD so keep those comments out of it please.
My point is simply this.
If you have a division of whatever bike manufacturer (lets not be brand specific) which makes its living out of selling bikes to the racing market. Your design team has very real and harsh constraints placed upon it. Its no good having a fantastic marketing team and great ads and life style walk-in centres etc if your bikes are not competitive and lose too often. Because then your target market (people who race), are not going to buy your bikes and you will go out of business. So your designers have to design with great care ensuring good reliable bikes that produce results, which are easy to ride fast, don't break down, are light and powerful.
Racing bikes thus have a purity of design like no others. Everything on them is there for a purpose. Anything which doesn't work is quickly eliminated. Anything which causes the bike to break during a race is sorted out. Equipment supplied with the bike is fit for purpose etc etc. WEIGHT IS CONSTANTLY MINIMISED. Anything that adversely affects performance is revised. Over time what emerges from a few generations of bike models are tried and tested designs that provide a very high level of performance and reliability. The XR650R is great example of this.
Now to me, if your racing division can build up a deep level of experience and expertise in that field then you can use that experience to build solid DS bikes that really deliver on their promise. To keep following that example, the XR650L is another great example of how Honda use their race experience to build a good bike that offers great bang for your bucks.
OEM's who have no racing division, or who ignore them when developing their DS designs will lose that purity of design and over time will start building bikes that are bloated and in which bling and image is more important than function and performance and which cant actually do what they are supposed to do that well. ie The marketing department will start dictating design instead of the harsh rules of competitive racing, using arguments like "how many people are actually going to ride up Jock Strap pass" etc.
But I feel strongly that in DS biking in particular, it is of great benefit having a DS bike which has a racing heritage. Especially given the fact that a large portion of DS riding is supposed to be off road and then good suspension, handling and low weight make a big difference then. If you are not Daryl Curtis it actually is even more important to have a bike like that because it will make it easier for you to ride bad terrain than something that was never really intended for that.
A lot of people dismiss racing as something extreme that is only for wild risk takers that have a death wish and whose bikes are expensive to maintain etc etc. Some of that is true but a lot of that perception is not. Racing bikes tend to be well designed (they have to be as I explained above) are simple and easy to maintain, don't have large amounts of unnecessary stuff on them, are hardy and don't suffer unnecessary damage in falls etc. It is true that sometimes the engines are highly strung and need short maintenance intervals but if one adapts a racing bike to become a DS bike at design stage that is easily addressed (compare the Husky 610 to Husky 450 for eg). The bike that emerges tends to be very nice to ride and does most things well. Its a great platform for a DS bike!
Now its true you can go and have an adventure on anything, even a Vespa, but if you are going ride off road terrain then I would prefer something designed with that deep understanding of what it takes to build a good off-road bike. If you don't really care what your bike is capable of then it actually doesn't matter what bike you buy, anything will do - fair enough.
Some of us do care about what bike we buy so, hence my point is I think its very important that a DS bike manufacturer has a deep off road racing back ground and this SHOULD result in a great range of DS bikes that are light, give good performance, handle well and are reliable. This applies of course to the off-road part of DS bike design but my point is that its far easier to make an off-road oriented bike acceptable on tar, than the reverse.
