Marketing The Manufacturers

There's been a noticeable void in the real adventure bike design for some time now, with light weight single cylinder 'dual-sport' enduro based bikes at one end, and cruiser and sport derivative machines butched-up with paint and ruggedized plastic at the other.

At one end we have something with modest versatility but limited range, speed and hauling capacity, at the other something typically so heavy the rider can't even get it up-right if he dumps, and so complex it needs a logistics support train as large and well monetized as a space shuttle launch for anything remotely resembling a real adventure.

There used to be a considerable range of machines that satisfied real adventure bike criterion: sub liter twins, that weighed under or close to 400 lbs, that had a race proven pedigree based Paris Dakar factory machines. There are a lot of riders late to the game that are now waiting for this machine to make come back, some in the U.S. only got to see a few limited import of these models.

One guy in Switzerland, tired of waiting, is courting Yamaha with his own advertising...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1abnuD384M

Some of the references made in the video probably won't be understood to those outside of the milieu of real ADV riding and Yamaha's Paris Dakar Rally history, but most should get a pretty good sense of what's being sought here...

Attachment 263

His page and design ideas here is also worth a look...