Cool post (borrowed)

[rubberdown]

Post borrowed from BadWeb, thanks Reepi:

I finally got around to reading the letters in this months cycle world regarding the new MotoCyz (or whatever) C1. Most used it as a datapoint to express how dissapointed they were in Buell.

It must really suck. Some *really* rich guy puts together a tribute to "function follows form" and makes a great big hot wheel. The bike looks really cool. The technology looks really cool. The designer talks really cool (to the NPR and country club set). They talk about all the cool things they are going to do with the bike.

But you can't get one now. And the only "races" they have run are ones to the nearest motorcycle show, where their top speed is limited to how fast the teamster driver that unloads it to the truck will drive his forklift. All the "cool looking" technology is totally unproven and technically suspect. The bike has not even raced yet, has not even really had a good run in an artificially created and insulated test environment, much less demonstrated the ability to race, much less demonstrated the ability to be mass produced.

All the guy has demonstrated so far is that he can spend a tremendous amount of money to make a very cool looking great big hot wheel.

Meanwhile, some working stiff from Wisconsin who is unable to silence the great ideas in his head, and who is immersed in the "form follows function" looks at the parts he can beg, borrow, or steal, and starts putting them together into something new and better.

Virtually from day one, they are already racing and on sale, duking it out on the track and open market. Getting bloody, getting smarter, getting better, getting tougher.

20 years later, every one of these parts originally begged and adapted has been re-engineered and reborn to do the job perfectly. No part of the bike does not have the mark and the touch of the sweaty guy in the garage wondering how he will make his next mortage payment, or the team he put together.

Bikes sit in show rooms near you that has a list of features (braided stainless brake lines, radical geometry, fuel in frame, oil in swingarm, zero lash belt drive, underbike exhaust, ZTL perimeter brake, great power and great economy).

These cool features were not added "so we have something to put in a marketing brochure next year" or added to feed somebodies ego, they were added because they *work*, and they work really well. All of this technology is available today (literally) to anyone who walks into any one of a hundred dealerships across the country, and costs less then a toyota tercel.

So while Micheal Cyzz is showing just how fast rich guys can spend money, the elves at Buell are showing us how good a sport oriented street bike can work, day after day, week after week, commuting to work, strafing twisties, or taking to the track. While the C1 shows us how pretty absolutely unproven designs and technology can *look*, racers across the country are taking my street bike, adding less money to it then I spent on my last minivan, and finishing races on the same lap as the best bikes offered by the other factories.

Well, the people writing to Cycle World may not get it, but we get it.

Let me say it again, THANK YOU ELVES! While people go look at the C1 at the nearest motorcycle show, and write whiney letters to Cycle World, I will be out *riding* my XB9SX, and every part of it you labored over makes my ride GREAT.