Throughout our international travels, we’ve usually taken discover of some extraordinary bikes that aren’t on the market right here within the US. The advertising and marketing of streetbikes is a posh enterprise endeavor made by boardrooms filled with well-trained gross sales researchers who (declare to) know what bikes would or wouldn’t promote to sure populations. We had been pretty awestruck again within the early Aughts after seeing the badass neo-cafe racers being manufactured by small-batch French agency Voxan. A number of of their glossy, completely proportioned V-twins had been parked up on the Ace Cafe, London throughout a Reunion Weekend gathering, and all eyes had been upon the faired Charade mannequin and the bare and really Manx Norton-inspired Black Magic. The water-cooled, 1,000cc V-twins had been fast, well-engineered and shortly developed a faithful following all through Europe, which was, to our understanding, the one area the place they had been being offered.
Pity that, as every time Cafe Racer journal has run a picture of any Voxen bikes, we’ve obtained inquiries asking what model they had been and whare might one be bought.
Sadly, the corporate’s restricted advertising and marketing program and gradual gross sales resulted in a chapter just a few years later, depriving would-be prospects of the particular joys of proudly owning a bespoke French manufacturing facility cafe racer to untold 1000’s.
Likewise, stalwart contributor Blair Powell lately turned us on to a different non-US launch streetbike, within the type of Harley-Davidson’s X440. This racy-looking single is clearly based mostly on the favored XR1200 Sportster from the early 2000s and shares that bike’s road tracker styling, proper all the way down to the racy tail part and lengthy, angled gas tank. The 30 horsepower, water-cooled single is presently tearing up the Indian market, a spot the place a 440cc motorbike is taken into account a “massive bike.” The Harley-Davidson title is very regarded amongst Indian riders, its standing as an aspirational, must-have type of transportation going again many a long time. An emergent Indian center class means increasingly more younger, skilled riders can now personal an American-made machine, and producing a middleweight streetbike is a great path for the Bar and Protect to observe. Not promoting the X440 within the States is probably going a smart move, particularly given how poorly the Road 500 and Road 750 fashions carried out in American showrooms. For those who recall, each had been dropped from the H-D lineup because of poor gross sales, so providing us fickle, big-displacement obsessed Yanks a 440cc Hog didn’t make a lot sense. Nonetheless, I’m certain CRM’s staffers aren’t alone when wishing they may check trip certainly one of these Asian-market-only singles, only for just a few miles. Possibly sometime…
