#flattrack

The FTR seems to be one of those love-it or hate-it polarizing kinds of motorcycles. With this trio of 2022 Indian FTR1200s, Polaris wants more love and less hate. When loosed upon the public in 2019, a large part of the confusion had to do with its 19-/18-inch wheel combo, complete with flat-track inspired Dunlop tires. What is this thing anyway? A sportbike? An ADV bike? A Ducati Monster wannabe? The only thing certain was that it wasn’t much like anything we’d seen before from a (major) American motorcycle manufacturer, or any manufacturer for that matter. The answer, of course, was that the FTR was a little of all those: a 120-horsepower liquid-cooled V-twin naked sportbike that was happy to blast down dirt roads too. Indian went so far as to hold the bike’s press launch in Baja, on a ride that included 40 miles of sandy dirt road. On the other hand, you could also just cruise, in the time-honored American idiom, thanks to the nice upright ergos and standard cruise control.

Husqvarna continues to add to its street lineup with the new Svartpilen 701. Shown as a concept at last year’s EICMA show, the “Black Arrow” is ready to join the Vitpilen 701 “White Arrow” in Husky’s street lineup.

There’s a motorcycling renaissance happening right now in a location you’d never expect. It’s far from any coast, and temperatures can be downright brutal in the winter. Nevertheless, for three seasons out of the year it’s not unusual to hear the sounds of roaring American V-Twins interspersed with the wail of Japanese Fours, British parallel-Twins, and everything else in between. Motorcycles new and old roam this land, and when the winter months make their presence felt, the locals make lemonade out of lemons – out come the dirtbikes, on go the studded tires, and off to the frozen lakes they go, shredding the ice in the land of never-ending traction.

After being Project 156-ed in by Polaris’ erstwhile Victory marque, you can imagine how we didn’t want to get our hope too far up about the Indian FTR1200 Custom unveiled last year at EICMA. Still, we’re happy that our intuition that the custom looked far too polished to be merely a one-off project turned out to be true. Now, we can’t help but wonder how much of the custom’s coolness will make it to the actual production motorcycle. We can’t wait for 2019.

Round four of the American Flat Track series, the Calistoga Half-Mile, needs no introduction, this thing is 2444 words long already, and so without further adieu…

It’s been about six weeks since the departure of MO‘s former Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Duke, who has been toiling at his new gig at The Brand Amp, a SoCal-based PR agency. As a production manager for the agency’s content department, Duke has primarily been working on behalf of Indian Motorcycles to produce video content used across Indian’s various channels. All the while, making us jealous of his close contact with the Indian FTR750. 

The clop, clop, clop of my steel shoe resonating through my helmet as I walked through the uncomfortable October heat at Perris Auto Speedway in my trusty NJK leathers as I headed toward the snarling motorcycle that was waiting for me.

For a lot of us motorcycle enthusiasts, our obsession with motorcycles or even motorsports in general began sometime during our youth. I don’t know exactly what it was about motorcycles that sparked my fascination. Was it the fact that they’re loud and menacingly fast or was it because my middle name is Danger and I have an audacious propensity to make my mom nervous? All I knew was that I was hooked and nothing was going to change that. Sorry, Mom…

Motorcycle luminary Roland Sands has long dreamed about bringing motorcycle racing to the heart of mainstream suburban SoCal, and the culmination of his work goes off this Saturday in a unique collision of moto and surf culture at Bolsa Chica beach, just north of Huntington Beach and south of Long Beach. Its promoters promise “a wave-shredding, fuel burning, hard-rocking extravaganza.”

With six motorcycle events at the 2017 Summer X Games (the most ever), we feel it is safe to say that the motorcycle crowd stole the show.  X Games Sure, we’re a little biased, but either way, we’re just excited to see so many different disciplines of motorcycle riding represented on the biggest stage in action sports.  Of the six X Games motorcycle events, which one is your favorite?

The X Games 2017 took place last weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In amongst the typical action-sports events of skateboarding and BMX was several moto events. If you weren’t able to tune into them over the weekend, we’ve taken the liberty of compiling all of the gold-medal runs from the various motorcycle events in one place.

Route 66 parallels Interstate 40 for miles and miles when heading east out of McLean, Texas (where the photo below was shot). The old 66 arches and sways with grades that follow the land’s natural contours, sometimes only feet away from the new highway. Asphalt replacement sections fill in the gaps, like the reconstructed vertebra of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Yeah, man, I’m riding a weather-beaten natural history museum all the way to Oklahoma.

The Stampede kicked off the weekend’s excitement for the Born Free motorcycle show yesterday at the legendary Costa Mesa Speedway in Orange County, California. The night’s festivities included short-track racing of everything from tank-shifting Harleys to rigid-frame minibikes and liquid-cooled Indians.

We all know what school self-taught motorcyclists end up attending: The School of Really Hard Knocks. Really hard. Since we think that MO readers are somewhat more intelligent and skillful than your garden variety motorcyclist, we thought we’d ask about your level of moto-education. What categories of riding schools have you attended? Have you stayed with street only, or maybe dirt only. Did you move up to performance riding? Perhaps even racing?

Any parent will tell you watching their children succeed brings a sense of pride that can’t be matched. But when your child is a world champion like Nicky Hayden, that sense of pride goes beyond winning a tee-ball game. Of course, succeeding at the highest level requires talent, dedication and discipline to achieve. And while you can’t teach talent, the other two traits are within the means of parents to instill in their children.