Tag Archives: Power Stroke

In the first part of this story we had talked about how the Americans wanted everything to be big so that they could have their bragging rights.  The same was the case for motorcycles as well.  The original icon of American motorcycling has always been Harley – Davidson.  When the Japanese went there, they found that the Harley riders were outcastes.  They gave themselves horrible sobriquets like Hell’s Angels and rode in big groups and vandalized everything on the way.  They gave motorcycling a bad name.  Honda rectified it with the “Only the nicest people ride a Honda” campaign with the launch of its Super Cub.  However, while the Americans were willing to consider that even nice people rode motorcycles they were not exactly happy with the size of the Cub.  So to sustain, big motorcycles were needed, but they also had to be different from the big Harleys for obvious reasons.

Harley Davidsons  were to Americans then, what Royal Enfield Bullets are to Indians now.  They were huge and were modified disgustingly with long kicked out front forks and had saddle bags and V twin engines that sounded glorious but leaked oil, broke down frequently and were a pain to maintain.  The technology used was the ancient push rod engine technology.  In management terms there is a concept called “Opportunity to See” and the Japanese ever the opportunists did not lose this opportunity, so they went to America and conquered it.  Their bikes were everything that the Harleys were not.  They were packed with new technology, were very reliable and most importantly they went very fast and consumed relatively less fuel.  Kawasaki saw another opportunity here, they wanted to do things differently.  So they made bikes such as the mad Mach3, called thus because it featured three cylinders in line and went super fast.  It also was a two stroke motorcycle that consumed everything that stood in its wake.  The Mach3 was not without its problems.  The middle cylinder did not cool too efficiently because it was in a sandwich and Kawasaki initially found solutions by changing the angle of banking of the cylinders.  But something more radical was required if the in line cylinders were to be cool and efficient.  So enter liquid cooling.  Kawasaki was not the inventor of liquid cooling but they put it to innovative use.

Kawasaki saw that the Americans had a penchant to do things differently.  So they were asking for pollution limits to be brought down and balmy California was at the forefront of this.  California has always been an important market for motorcycles and the clue to that lay in the weather.  Unlike Europe which was had inclement weather for most of the year, California and some other states in the US had nice weather with temperatures hovering in the eighty degrees Fahrenheit range.  The USA has always been the citadel of marketing.  You could sell anything, absolutely anything if that thing was packaged very well.  The Japanese being who they were again saw an opportunity.  Package their bikes well and the Americans would buy them in droves.  So Honda and Kawasaki upped the ante with technology.  They shifted to four strokes but their motorcycles were most unlike the Harleys that the Americans were used to.  Instead of V twin configurations, Honda went for V4 configurations while Kawasaki went for in line four cylinder configurations.  But the biggest difference was not so much in the engine as it was in the chassis.

The usual topography of America and especially that of California is long flat lands that had long straight roads that went on and on.  So typically bikes were made with no respect whatsoever for handling.  Seriously, what great handling do you require to keep going in a straight line for ever?  Europe was different and had Grand Prix racing on tracks that were twisting and turning.  Honda, the most ambitious among the Japanese wanted to conquer GP racing which was dominated mainly by British and Italian motorcycles.  GP racing taught Honda the importance of a light weight motorcycle with a chassis that could enable the rider to turn the motorcycle without losing time or balance.  The Japanese saw that the Americans raced their cars (mainly drag racing) and a bit of bikes as well.  They took the next big thing to America, circuit racing and the “race on Sunday and sell on Monday” adage took shape.  Kawasaki stole a march over the others here by creating a tractable motor in a wonderful chassis which made for a sure fire winner.  Thus the nomenclature GPz was born.  The first GPz was a 900cc and it became a hit with the Americans.

Now came the time to convert this hit into a marketing success as well.  The marketing savvy Americans wanted a name that was catchy, something that everyone could relate to.  In this meanwhile the GPz was being called the Z1 and till day it is considered to be the world’s first Superbike. The Americans told the Kawasaki factory that the ideal name for the Kawasaki super bike would be Ninja, the stealthy, quick, nimble and efficient martial artist.  Kawasaki liked it, after all it came from native Japan, from the practitioners of the martial art of Ninjutsu.  So they agreed and the name stuck, for good.  In America for a while Ninja became a generic name for a super bike like Xerox for a copier machine.

This was a good and a bad thing for Kawasaki.  It was good that their product name became synonymous with a category of motorcycle but really bad because every other Japanese super bike was also being called a Ninja.  That somehow seemed to dilute their achievement.  Sometimes too much success can work against you.  That is what happened to Kawasaki.  So it needed to do something and really quick.  Kawasaki had a liking for the letter Z.  That is why they introduced it along with the GP moniker as GPz.  So henceforth they decided to prefix their Ninja motorcycles with ZX and a number that denoted the cubic capacity of the motorcycle.  Thus was born the nomenclature of ZX-6, ZX-7, ZX-9, ZX-10 and later the ZX-11 (which was essentially an upgraded ZX-10) and finally what is considered to be the greatest Superbike and Kawasaki ever, the ZX-12.  In the United States there is today a ZX-14 as well, but that is something we shall come to soon.  The no.6 denoted a 600cc, the no.7 denoted 750cc, the no.9 denoted 900cc, 10 denoted 1000cc and when the engine went over 1000cc it became 11.  Somewhere Suzuki had decided to threaten Kawasaki with the Hayabusa and to take it head on the ZX-12 was created.

Kawasaki spread its wings to Europe as well and there they made sure that the Ninja moniker would be used in conjunction with the ZX moniker which meant that the motorcycle was a racer and so the suffix of R also was used.  So the nomenclature in Europe even today is Kawasaki ZX-10 R Ninja.  In the middle however Kawasaki found that they had to upgrade their 600cc with a shorter stroke engine and so gave it the nomenclature of ZX-6RR Ninja.  But that was a one off thing.  In Europe where greater significance is attached to taxonomy Kawasaki began using the ZZ-R nomenclature for bikes that were less sporty and more for touring.  So what is called the Ninja 250 R in India today started life in Europe as Kawasaki ZZ-R 250 and there were ZZ-R motorcycles of 750, 1000 and 1200 cc.  These were NOT Ninjas and that tradition continues till today.

In the meanwhile the changing of market conditions essentially meant that Kawasaki had started cutting down on the number of motorcycle platforms.  In racing, the 750 cc category became redundant and so the ZX7 no longer exists.  Since World Superbikes now has 1000cc for four cylinder engines, the ZX-10 R Ninja was reborn.  The ZX-12 R was put rest a few years ago.  So in Europe the Kawasaki Ninjas are strictly the ZX-6R that races in the Supersports category and the ZX-10R that races in the Superbikes category.  The Suzuki Hayabusa though very fast was never a track tool and a few years back Kawasaki launched the ZZ-R 1400 which for the first time incorporated a monocoque chassis and along with the Hayabusa sits in the sports tourer category.  Kawasaki created a for every day use a motorcycle called the ER-6n and a variant called the ER-6f.  The ER is for every day/every one, the 6 for 650 cc, the n for naked and f for faired.  So what we now get in India and the bike that launched this story, the Ninja 650 R is actually the ER-6f in Europe.

Back home in America, like in India the ER-6f became a Ninja and so received the nomenclature of Ninja 650 – R while the naked bike still goes with the ER-6n name.  In the meanwhile the ZZ-R 250 also gained the Ninja tag and became the Ninja 250 R.  So now within the Ninja category there are two types.  Kawasaki calls the non ZX Ninjas, Sports machines in the USA and the ZX Ninjas, Super Sports.  When it decided to make its 250cc bike the entry level Kawasaki globally it became a Ninja even in Europe but without the ZX prefix.  The Ninja 650 R is again a marketing strategy that works in the USA but not in Europe.  The Americans want something in the nature of a super bike so there is the Ninja 650 R as also a Ninja 1000 which is a faired version of the Z 1000.  In markets such as as Thailand and India, Kawasaki is now following the American nomenclature and so the 650 became the Ninja 650 R.  The next bike will probably be the Ninja 1000 and not the ZX-10R Ninja which would be much more expensive.  In India and Thailand getting a big bike with the Ninja name is great, people are not fastidious like the Europeans who insist on proper taxonomy.  So the marketing teams have been selling the non cutting edge bikes as Ninjas just as they do in America.  In fact, since the Ninja 250 R and the 650 R that are sold here are of European specifications they get fuel injection, while the Americans still do with carburetors on their bikes.

Thus dear friends ends the Ninja story for now.  We request you to now keep a couple of things in mind.  The first is that in the narration for the sake of continuity we have not talked of some models that came in and went.  We also did not talk about other existing Kawasaki models such as the Versys, the Concourse etc because this is a Ninja story only. We would also like you to remember that the reality of the Japanese market is slightly different.  At one time Kawasaki even made scooters and 50cc pocket rockets.  In Japan for Kawasaki it is a completely different ball game altogether, something that we also do not know fully about and hence will not comment on.  Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed the ride down history lane.  Please do comment, it will be hugely appreciated.

Motoring journos the world over have a habit (we will leave it to you to decide whether it is a good one or a bad one); when a product is launched they will beat the hell out of it till people are finally tired of it.  Please don’t misunderstand.  Even praising a product endlessly constitutes beating the hell out of it, so there is no escaping that really.  We are a humble website, just a couple of months old and most manufacturers (Yamaha excepted) have yet to acknowledge our presence.  So under the circumstances, what are our chances of getting invited to the launch of new products?  Minus whatever number comes to your mind.  But then you see we also like to think of ourselves as proper motor journos and therefore we too have the compulsive urge to do  a product or a name into the ground, but you the good reader can see the problem; where is the product?  At Riot Engine we like to think of ourselves as intelligent and resourceful people (please do indulge us in our delusion) and so we have decided to start the process of beating the hell out of a name.  Till yesterday the preferred name that has been on the tip of the tongues and fingers of motorcycle journos has been CBR.  Automobile mags (both in their digital and printed formats) have been uttering the CBR name as if it were the Holy Grail of all motorcycling. So everybody has been comparing the CBR 250R with the Ninja 250R and going ga ga (mercifully not that lady, phew) over both but giving the extra star to the Honda CBR 250R while saying a few kind words about the Kawasaki Ninja 250R.  But that will all change now and that is where our real story starts.

From yesterday on, the word Ninja has come back into big circulation.  The Kawasaki Ninja 650R has been launched in India.  Motoring journos must be queueing up for rides or riding the Ninja 650R while we sit in front of our computers and bang this story in.  But we will beat the seasoned pros to the Ninja mayhem here and so ours is the first laugh.  It was in the year 2009 that the word Ninja entered into the vocabulary of the motorcyclist in India big time.  Prior to that there were the old hippie uncles, whose brains were warped by excesses of LSD, Ecstasy, various forms of tobacco and even more forms of liquor, passed on a sacred word to their cute little nephews before the good Lord said enough and raised them to heaven.  This sacred word was Ninja and the privileged few nephews (those who had these hippie uncles) uttered the name in great veneration and tried to keep it from reaching the hoi polloi (mainly because they did not know much else about the name).  To the lesser mortals (those without hippie uncles) Ninja meant that horrible mutant turtle in the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” series.  To the ones who went to schools that still had good teachers (a tremendous rarity), Ninja meant the short form of the practitioners of the revered and highly difficult martial art form of Ninjutsu.

It goes to the credit of one Japanese company called Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) that the word Ninja has come into the vocabulary of even ordinary and very duh bikers like us.  Though the company was Japanese, the suggestion of using that name came from Americans (yeah they have hardly left anything untouched, especially if it had to do anything with petrol, a true American favourite).  Kawasaki Heavy Industries was the brain child of a venerable old Japanese man Shozo Kawasaki who built huge shipyard (in 1896) which in turn built ships. In 1906 the company diversified into making rolling stock for trains.  Over the years the product portfolio of KHI incorporated everything that one could think of; locomotives, planes (civilian and warplanes), helicopters, robots (well for now we cannot think of anything else).  Kawasaki like most Japanese companies was proud of its achievements, but in the absence of a product that was easily visible and identifiable as a Kawasaki, they did not find themselves in the everyday vocabulary of people.

So in the 1950s after Honda and Suzuki had established themselves, Kawasaki decided that building motorcycles was a good way of letting the general population know that there was this technology intensive company that one had to take cognizance of.  So Kawasaki became the third Japanese company to turn to making motorcycles and came with a background very different from the two companies before it and the one after it, which was Yamaha.  Shoichiro Honda started Honda motorcycles after first making sewing machines, while Michio Suzuki steered his company from making looms to motorcycles and Yamaha, established by Torakusu Yamaha, started off as a maker of pianos and organs (of the musical variety, so don’t go getting any ideas).  While for the other three moving into motorcycle manufacture was an up scaling of sorts for Kawasaki it was akin to down scaling.

All the four manufacturers started off with small humble puttering machines that were used as daily transport in Japan, a country ravaged by the World War II (thanks to an irritated Uncle Sam who dropped two and not one nuclear bombs on them because they were proving to be pesky, the Japanese that is).  But the Japanese are very resourceful people and they came out of their problems with all their techno prowess firing.  And they went to the United States of America, a country that rewarded big moustaches (we assure you it is not mustaches), big fire arms and more importantly huge mouths that believed that a person’s greatness was directly proportional to his bragging abilities.  In order to be able to brag, the Americans believed they needed big things.  No point in talking about small things, right?  In order to acquire their bragging rights the Americans were more than willing to part with the ubiquitous dollar and so for people wanting to sell anything (motorcycles, cars, rock music, Styrofoam, condoms, guns, pet stones, bull shit) the logical destination was the United States of America.

Since everything that the Americans wanted was usually big, it became necessary for the Japanese to manufacture bikes also that were big.  And it was in this process that Kawasaki landed up with the name Ninja for their motorcycles.  We will save that for part two of this story dear reader, so fret not.  Comeback to the website and get the second part of this story, a story like no other.

In the first part of this story we had talked about how the Americans wanted everything to be big so that they could have their bragging rights.  The same was the case for motorcycles as well.  The original icon of American motorcycling has always been Harley – Davidson.  When the Japanese went there, they found that the Harley riders were outcastes.  They gave themselves horrible sobriquets like Hell’s Angels and rode in big groups and vandalized everything on the way.  They gave motorcycling a bad name.  Honda rectified it with the “Only the nicest people ride a Honda” campaign with the launch of its Super Cub.  However, while the Americans were willing to consider that even nice people rode motorcycles they were not exactly happy with the size of the Cub.  So to sustain, big motorcycles were needed, but they also had to be different from the big Harleys for obvious reasons.

Harley Davidsons  were to Americans then, what Royal Enfield Bullets are to Indians now.  They were huge and were modified disgustingly with long kicked out front forks and had saddle bags and V twin engines that sounded glorious but leaked oil, broke down frequently and were a pain to maintain.  The technology used was the ancient push rod engine technology.  In management terms there is a concept called “Opportunity to See” and the Japanese ever the opportunists did not lose this opportunity, so they went to America and conquered it.  Their bikes were everything that the Harleys were not.  They were packed with new technology, were very reliable and most importantly they went very fast and consumed relatively less fuel.  Kawasaki saw another opportunity here, they wanted to do things differently.  So they made bikes such as the mad Mach3, called thus because it featured three cylinders in line and went super fast.  It also was a two stroke motorcycle that consumed everything that stood in its wake.  The Mach3 was not without its problems.  The middle cylinder did not cool too efficiently because it was in a sandwich and Kawasaki initially found solutions by changing the angle of banking of the cylinders.  But something more radical was required if the in line cylinders were to be cool and efficient.  So enter liquid cooling.  Kawasaki was not the inventor of liquid cooling but they put it to innovative use.

Kawasaki saw that the Americans had a penchant to do things differently.  So they were asking for pollution limits to be brought down and balmy California was at the forefront of this.  California has always been an important market for motorcycles and the clue to that lay in the weather.  Unlike Europe which was had inclement weather for most of the year, California and some other states in the US had nice weather with temperatures hovering in the eighty degrees Fahrenheit range.  The USA has always been the citadel of marketing.  You could sell anything, absolutely anything if that thing was packaged very well.  The Japanese being who they were again saw an opportunity.  Package their bikes well and the Americans would buy them in droves.  So Honda and Kawasaki upped the ante with technology.  They shifted to four strokes but their motorcycles were most unlike the Harleys that the Americans were used to.  Instead of V twin configurations, Honda went for V4 configurations while Kawasaki went for in line four cylinder configurations.  But the biggest difference was not so much in the engine as it was in the chassis.

The usual topography of America and especially that of California is long flat lands that had long straight roads that went on and on.  So typically bikes were made with no respect whatsoever for handling.  Seriously, what great handling do you require to keep going in a straight line for ever?  Europe was different and had Grand Prix racing on tracks that were twisting and turning.  Honda, the most ambitious among the Japanese wanted to conquer GP racing which was dominated mainly by British and Italian motorcycles.  GP racing taught Honda the importance of a light weight motorcycle with a chassis that could enable the rider to turn the motorcycle without losing time or balance.  The Japanese saw that the Americans raced their cars (mainly drag racing) and a bit of bikes as well.  They took the next big thing to America, circuit racing and the “race on Sunday and sell on Monday” adage took shape.  Kawasaki stole a march over the others here by creating a tractable motor in a wonderful chassis which made for a sure fire winner.  Thus the nomenclature GPz was born.  The first GPz was a 900cc and it became a hit with the Americans.

Now came the time to convert this hit into a marketing success as well.  The marketing savvy Americans wanted a name that was catchy, something that everyone could relate to.  In this meanwhile the GPz was being called the Z1 and till day it is considered to be the world’s first Superbike. The Americans told the Kawasaki factory that the ideal name for the Kawasaki super bike would be Ninja, the stealthy, quick, nimble and efficient martial artist.  Kawasaki liked it, after all it came from native Japan, from the practitioners of the martial art of Ninjutsu.  So they agreed and the name stuck, for good.  In America for a while Ninja became a generic name for a super bike like Xerox for a copier machine.

This was a good and a bad thing for Kawasaki.  It was good that their product name became synonymous with a category of motorcycle but really bad because every other Japanese super bike was also being called a Ninja.  That somehow seemed to dilute their achievement.  Sometimes too much success can work against you.  That is what happened to Kawasaki.  So it needed to do something and really quick.  Kawasaki had a liking for the letter Z.  That is why they introduced it along with the GP moniker as GPz.  So henceforth they decided to prefix their Ninja motorcycles with ZX and a number that denoted the cubic capacity of the motorcycle.  Thus was born the nomenclature of ZX-6, ZX-7, ZX-9, ZX-10 and later the ZX-11 (which was essentially an upgraded ZX-10) and finally what is considered to be the greatest Superbike and Kawasaki ever, the ZX-12.  In the United States there is today a ZX-14 as well, but that is something we shall come to soon.  The no.6 denoted a 600cc, the no.7 denoted 750cc, the no.9 denoted 900cc, 10 denoted 1000cc and when the engine went over 1000cc it became 11.  Somewhere Suzuki had decided to threaten Kawasaki with the Hayabusa and to take it head on the ZX-12 was created.

Kawasaki spread its wings to Europe as well and there they made sure that the Ninja moniker would be used in conjunction with the ZX moniker which meant that the motorcycle was a racer and so the suffix of R also was used.  So the nomenclature in Europe even today is Kawasaki ZX-10 R Ninja.  In the middle however Kawasaki found that they had to upgrade their 600cc with a shorter stroke engine and so gave it the nomenclature of ZX-6RR Ninja.  But that was a one off thing.  In Europe where greater significance is attached to taxonomy Kawasaki began using the ZZ-R nomenclature for bikes that were less sporty and more for touring.  So what is called the Ninja 250 R in India today started life in Europe as Kawasaki ZZ-R 250 and there were ZZ-R motorcycles of 750, 1000 and 1200 cc.  These were NOT Ninjas and that tradition continues till today.

In the meanwhile the changing of market conditions essentially meant that Kawasaki had started cutting down on the number of motorcycle platforms.  In racing, the 750 cc category became redundant and so the ZX7 no longer exists.  Since World Superbikes now has 1000cc for four cylinder engines, the ZX-10 R Ninja was reborn.  The ZX-12 R was put rest a few years ago.  So in Europe the Kawasaki Ninjas are strictly the ZX-6R that races in the Supersports category and the ZX-10R that races in the Superbikes category.  The Suzuki Hayabusa though very fast was never a track tool and a few years back Kawasaki launched the ZZ-R 1400 which for the first time incorporated a monocoque chassis and along with the Hayabusa sits in the sports tourer category.  Kawasaki created a for every day use a motorcycle called the ER-6n and a variant called the ER-6f.  The ER is for every day/every one, the 6 for 650 cc, the n for naked and f for faired.  So what we now get in India and the bike that launched this story, the Ninja 650 R is actually the ER-6f in Europe.

Back home in America, like in India the ER-6f became a Ninja and so received the nomenclature of Ninja 650 – R while the naked bike still goes with the ER-6n name.  In the meanwhile the ZZ-R 250 also gained the Ninja tag and became the Ninja 250 R.  So now within the Ninja category there are two types.  Kawasaki calls the non ZX Ninjas, Sports machines in the USA and the ZX Ninjas, Super Sports.  When it decided to make its 250cc bike the entry level Kawasaki globally it became a Ninja even in Europe but without the ZX prefix.  The Ninja 650 R is again a marketing strategy that works in the USA but not in Europe.  The Americans want something in the nature of a super bike so there is the Ninja 650 R as also a Ninja 1000 which is a faired version of the Z 1000.  In markets such as as Thailand and India, Kawasaki is now following the American nomenclature and so the 650 became the Ninja 650 R.  The next bike will probably be the Ninja 1000 and not the ZX-10R Ninja which would be much more expensive.  In India and Thailand getting a big bike with the Ninja name is great, people are not fastidious like the Europeans who insist on proper taxonomy.  So the marketing teams have been selling the non cutting edge bikes as Ninjas just as they do in America.  In fact, since the Ninja 250 R and the 650 R that are sold here are of European specifications they get fuel injection, while the Americans still do with carburetors on their bikes.

Thus dear friends ends the Ninja story for now.  We request you to now keep a couple of things in mind.  The first is that in the narration for the sake of continuity we have not talked of some models that came in and went.  We also did not talk about other existing Kawasaki models such as the Versys, the Concourse etc because this is a Ninja story only. We would also like you to remember that the reality of the Japanese market is slightly different.  At one time Kawasaki even made scooters and 50cc pocket rockets.  In Japan for Kawasaki it is a completely different ball game altogether, something that we also do not know fully about and hence will not comment on.  Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed the ride down history lane.  Please do comment, it will be hugely appreciated.

It could be said that what Michael Schumacher has been to Formula1, Valentino Rossi has been to MotoGP.  The parallels are far too many to ignore.  If Schumacher transformed Ferrari from  a has been to the most coveted and successful team, Rossi did so with Yamaha.  Michael Schumacher won a record number of seven world titles in F1 and Valentino Rossi won the same number in the premier class apart from two more in the 125cc and 250cc classes.  Michael Schumacher rose to great heights and decimated legends on the way, so too did Rossi.  Schumacher made F1 fans forget the greats that preceded him as did Valentino Rossi in MotoGP.  Michael Schumacher wanted his team mates to have a less than equal status, something that Valentino Rossi also always wanted.  Michael Schumacher has a mentor called Ross Brawn and Valentino Rossi has one called Jerry Burgess.  Michael Schumacher took his team of people when he switched from one manufacturer to another and ditto with Valentino Rossi.  Schumacher instilled fear in the FIA and race stewards and that is the case with Rossi and the FIM and race stewards.  Schumacher was hated by his team mates and rivals as was Rossi.  Schumacher seems to have destroyed his formidable reputation by coming out of retirement and Rossi seems to be doing the same by not retiring when he should have.  Now that we have finished drawing an exhaustive list of parallels between the two legends let us get down to the business of understanding Rossi, just like we did with Schumacher.  And yet again we tread where angels fear to tread and claim that we will throw up a story that is based in objectivity.

Valentino Rossi started young and with typical Italian style and flair.  He took one year to learn the ropes of the 125cc class and the next year won the World Championship in that class.  He then moved on to the 250cc class, took one year to acclimatize and won the world title in that class in the subsequent year.  He did this on an Italian machine called Aprilia and was sponsored by an Italian beer company called Nostro Azzuro.  He always raced with the number 46 even when he was world champion because he is superstitious and believes in that number because his father raced with it.  Also it totals to one anyway, numerologically speaking.  Each of his victories was followed by celebrations that were as spectacular as the victories themselves.  The fans loved him, TV commentators loved him and even the next door girls’ parents loved him.  It was always “Everybody Loves Rossi” (please excuse us Ray Romano for punning like this on your show).  Well there was this one person who did not like all that much.  He found Rossi very cocky and irreverent especially since he was Aprilia’s original favourite son who won multiple 250cc championships with the manufacturer.  This man goes by the name of Massimiliano Biaggi or the Roman Emperor.  The Roman Emperor found that his reign and his reputation very totally disrupted by this gangly lad called Rossi.

Just after he won his title with Aprilia in the 250cc category, Rossi found himself staring at an opportunity.  The great Mick Doohan who was five times 500cc world champion had decided he had had enough.  Mich Doohan was the man around whom the Honda legend was built just as Yamaha’s was built first around Kenny Roberts Sr. and later in a more pronounced way around Wayne Rainey.  Rainey had made the Yamaha look invincible and was leading a world championship and a race at Misano when he crashed and became paralysed chest downwards.  After that the Yamaha seat was never filled properly by anyone and Max Biaggi was riding for the works Yamaha team along with Rossi’s hero Norifumi Abe who later lost his life in a road accident.  Biaggi could not and did not make any difference to Yamaha in a positive way.  Neither could Loris Capirossi who tried the Yamaha for one season. Mick Doohan’s decision meant that Honda had to find a very capable rider, one who would continue the reign started by Doohan instead of going the Yamaha way. Rossi and Honda were made for each other at that point.  Honda needed a rider who could keep them in the front and Rossi needed a ride that could keep him in the front.  The first year of their togetherness was very akin to Rossi’s history in the 125cc and 250cc classes.  Rossi learnt the ropes under the watchful eye of Jerry Burgess who was Mick Doohan’s crew chief and who had trained under the legendary Erv Kanemoto.  The second year in the 500cc class and on the Honda, Rossi did what was now a part of a pattern.  He won the world championship.

In another story in the Power Stroke column itself we have talked about the clout that Honda enjoys in GP racing and how it successfully changes everything including rules.  Honda felt that the 500cc two strokes were meaningless in a world which was moving in the direction of environmental correctness and therefore was looking at reduced emissions.  In the real world four strokes were the way forward and Honda felt that should be so in racing as well.  What Honda wants, Honda gets and so the MotoGP category came into being.  Five hundred cc two strokes paved the way for 990cc four strokes.  Electronics also came into play.  Rossi became number one and there was no challenge to him till such time that Daijiro Kato looked like a threat.  Honda wanted to promote Daijiro, because he was Japanese and very rarely did any Japanese rider look like a world championship prospect. But unfortunately Kato died in a crash and Honda decided that it was time to slow down the bikes and shifted to an 800cc format.  But before that happened Honda found that Valentino Rossi was becoming very demanding and Honda always puts itself first and so Rossi in order to keep his ego intact, went to Yamaha.  Yamaha who were starved of victories did everything that the Rossi-Burgess combo ordered and in the process went on to become the most successful manufacturer in the 800cc era and more importantly Honda went rapidly backwards and did not yet win a title in the 800cc era as yet..  The only other manufacturer to win a title was Ducati.  Yamaha realized that it cannot only depend upon Rossi and also that his team mate Colin Edwards was growing rather long in the tooth and was only producing less than ordinary results and so decided that it needed to invest in a younger rider for the future.

They found Jorge Lorenzo who was brash, tempestuous, arrogant and imminently dislikable, but pretty talented.  In the very first year on the Yamaha Lorenzo went like stink.  He crashed in practices, walked on crutches but ended up on the podium after races just like Lewis Hamilton did in his first year in F1.  Rossi was not comfortable with the growing reputation of Lorenzo and the complaints started.  First it was all about how he develops bikes and how Lorenzo benefits from that.  As Lorenzo grew in stature and became a bigger threat, Rossi issued an ultimatum.  Me or Lorenzo, choose.  Yamaha was caught between the devil and the deep sea.  On the one hand was Rossi the man who transformed Yamaha from a lost in the wilderness team to a consistently world championship winning one, but the man is now in his thirties and beginning to crack under pressure occasionally. On the other hand is Lorenzo growing in strength, younger but his development skills were yet unknown.  Yamaha made a call and decided on Lorenzo and to invest in the future since Ben Spies who had won spectacularly in the rookie season of the World Superbike Championship was also contracted to them.

Rossi had successfully burnt bridges with Honda and now with Yamaha.  Suzuki, the other manufacturer in the fray, it seemed had forgotten how to build motorcycles.  Kawasaki came, saw and got conquered and had already run away, tail firmly between its hind legs.  That left only Ducati.  Ducati had always been an iffy machine, its only success truly coming in the hands of Casey Stoner who seemed like he could ride anything, anywhere, anytime.  The Stoner and Ducati relationship too had developed problems and his mentor at Ducati, Livio Suppo had gone to Honda already, and made a case for Stoner.  Honda bought that because Stoner seemed to be the only realistic possibility of fetching them an 800cc world title before it is wound up at the end of this year.  Ducati’s other riders such as Loris Capirossi, Marco Melandri, Nicky Hayden and handful of others  found the Ducati to be more than a handful.  They had all failed spectacularly.  Ducati’s only hope now was Rossi.  So the brilliant Italian marriage happened in MotoGP, just like the German marriage in F1.  Rossi is now finding out that the Ducati is not just more than a handful, it is more than his shoulderful as well.  And Rossi is now hovering dangerously on the precipice that can destroy is formidable reputation.  So far this season he has been saved and made to look respectable by other people’s misfortunes.  Otherwise Rossi is comfortably behind the Hondas by a second and a half and some times even two seconds.  Now the rules are changing again next year.  Ducati is not a manufacturer with a lot of experience in GP racing.  If they falter again, Rossi’s reputation will be in tatters.

So is this all Rossi’s fault?  We say yes.  Rossi should have understood that he was in no position to issue ultimatums to Yamaha.  He should have reconciled to riding around on a Yamaha with Jorge Lorenzo having equal status.  If that was too difficult to digest, he should have just retired from GP racing gracefully and gone into rallying, apparently a sport he enjoys.  That would have looked like an ace motorcycle racer trying something new.  But Rossi chose Ducati and this could end in tears, like Michael Schumacher’s return to F1 is threatening to.  Schumacher was doing quite fine racing a Honda CBR in the occasional race in German Superbikes.  But he chose to come back to F1.  Now we have two legends who have the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging on their heads.  They are most likely to come out looking second best from the decisions that they have made.   But ultimately who knows.  We shall wait and see.

For someone living in India, the attitude that the West has towards motorcycles is a little difficult to comprehend.  In fact, most would find that attitude bizarre.  In India the motorcycle is an extension of the self, one that goes everywhere with the user (the word rider has been deliberately left out since it can connote other meanings).  It is used for the office commute, weekend getaway, family outing (one or sometimes two small kids on the petrol tank, wife with a little baby on the pillion seat) and even inter city transport.  So what would life be without this contraption that enables all people to do all things (including riding very badly and getting killed)?  Unimaginable would be the most suitable word here.  But the West, especially America sees the motorcycle as the preferred steed of the anti social and uncouth rogue who roams the American freeways like Satan does the roads of hell.  It doesn’t help that Harley Davidson riders not only call themselves HOGS but look like them (hogs that is), unwashed and unkempt.  Sobriquets like Hells Angels and Hell Raisers add to the already powerful imagery.  No wonder then that motorcycling is not considered the habit of the genteel and the respect worthy in the United States of A.

And how is the scenario in Europe? Not too different, but not like in the US.  The key difference is that in European countries motorcycles are not the preserve of hooligans, beer drinkers and stink raisers. Still the motorcycle is not the preferred mode of transport.  The answer to understanding this lies in the weather.  Europe is near the tropic of Capricorn and upwards towards the north pole.  So with the exception of some sunny areas in Spain most of the time Europe is quite cold.  It means that riding on a motorcycles will lead to the formation of icicles on ones face, hands and legs.  Cold increases with wind chill which the rider of a motorcycle will have to encounter and with a great deal of discomfort and maybe even suffer frost bite.  No wonder then motorcycling is popular mainly in sunny Spain and not in the rest of Europe where the occasional adventurist will want to ride a motorcycle in the summer when the temperatures reach a warm 15 degrees Celsius.   And if you are in England it rains everyday and who would want to ride in the rain?  So four wheelers with HVAC and good dynamics are preferred.

It is therefore this reason that the Europeans prefer four wheeled motorsport to the two wheeled one.  And motor racing is very European, at least in the way in which we know it here in India.  So everywhere there is this greater glamour and viewership  that is associated with Formula One and not MotoGP.  Old timers will remember old ads in between races featuring riders such as Ralph Waldmann, Doriano Romboni and Olivier Jacque asking the viewers to watch two wheeled racing since it is every bit as exciting as four wheeled racing.  Ralph Waldmann who was sponsored by Marlboro once said that F1 drivers like his fellow German Michael Schumacher thought of themselves as gods and the motorcycle racers as mere mortals and therefore never their equals.  Waldmann was very miffed at being ignored by not just Formula1 drivers but by the media as well.  Things have improved a bit these days but that is still insignificant.

MotoGP is a very European phenomenon and it emphasizes more on the prototype character of racing than production machinery racing.  The latter is more the creation of the Americans, where the” race on Sunday and sell on Monday” dictum is supposed to work.  Maybe that is as only as real as the free market, but it seems to work for the Americans.  The Americans followed a policy of isolationism for centuries before the Second World War and even today the mindset of the Americans is to create things for themselves on their soil only.  Baseball, NBA and importantly for us the AMA or the American Motorcycle Association are for America only; and let the rest of the world be damned, it is not for them to reason why.

The marketing savvy Japanese caught on to this trend and decided to sell motorcycles in America, the country with the largest per capita consumption and with a population willing to be persuaded by advertising and other opinion changing practices.  Honda went to America and persuaded them to believe that “only the nicest people ride a Honda” and sold many motorcycles before starting to sell cars in big numbers.  Suzuki who saw the days of its power looms being numbered quickly shifted focus to selling motorcycles and lo and behold there was America, the land of the plenty to go to.  Kawasaki Heavy Industries was doing a whole load of good work in huge industrial projects, ship building, train car building, train locomotive manufacture, helicopters and planes but none of these were giving it the visibility it wanted, so it decided to showcase its technological prowess with motorcycles and what place better than the land of uninhibited consumption?  Yamaha also wanted to do things other just making musical instruments and so got into motorcycle manufacturing and like the other Japanese companies they too went to America. All these companies raced their motorcycles (which are all production based) on Sunday and sold them on Monday and were not too bothered with the rest of the world, until they saw another window of opportunity.

The Europeans may not have taken to motorcycling too much but they were not entirely averse to racing.  So there were marques like Norton, Triumph, Vincent, Velocette, Moto Guzzi, MV Augusta, Benelli, Ducati, Morbidelli and Zundapp who were making prototypes and showcasing their techno prowess.  The fiercely competitive Honda wanted a piece of this pie as well and went to Europe with machines that were laughed at initially but feared and dreaded later on.  Honda did most unconventional things such as building six cylindered 125 cc machines and beat the four strokes of MV Augusta and Moto Guzzi with wickedly powerful two strokes.  The rest of the Japanese did not want to be left out of this and so faithfully followed Honda to Europe and to Grand Prix racing.

The two stroke motorcycles of Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki collectively annihilated not just European manufacturers from racing but from manufacture of two wheelers itself.  All the British manufacturers shut shop as did most Germans with the exception of BMW which became a niche player and most Italians went into different states of doldrums from which they never recovered.  All Italian motorcycle marques have been taken over by either venture capitalists or other manufacturers from other parts of the world.

The GP market became the sole preserve of Japanese companies with only Cagiva in the late 1980s and early 1990s trying to go racing with them.  Of the Japanese Kawasaki was not always involved; it flirted with GP racing  occasionally first in the 1980s with riders like Kork Bollington and Anton Mang and again in the first decade of the new Millennium with riders like John Hopkins, Anthony West and Marco Melandri.  Aprilia tried GP racing and left (though it did stunningly well in the 125cc and 250 cc categories with years of domination) BMW threatened to try but did not and only Ducati thanks to one Casey Stoner was able to stand up to the might of the Japanese big three.  Suzuki has over the years become a marginal player especially with the re-introduction of four stroke racing in GPs.   The re-introduction of four stroke engines in GPs is a fascinating tale, one that merits great attention.  We have said that the Americans brought production machinery racing into the picture.  A similar thing was tried in Europe too but with the exception of UK which now faithfully follows what the Americans do, production machinery racing did not find too many takers.

To try and make production machinery a global phenomenon the European companies such as Ducati took the lead because they thought that there would be no competition from the Japanese, at least for a while. So the whole World Superbike racing concept came into being in the 1990s and gained some currency in the first decade of the 21st Century.  Initially World Superbikes was a Ducati show but the Japanese got wind of the possible popularity of this series and invaded it big time.  Now all Japanese manufacturers are involved in World Superbikes and three of them in MotoGP.  It is here that the plot thickens.  Honda is so powerful that it can write and re-write rules with only some token resistance from Yamaha and no one else.  Take a look at MotoGP.  What do you see?  The 500cc two stroke class first paved the way for a 990cc four stroke MotoGP class and then to the now existing 800cc MotoGP class.  The 990cc was to not tread on the toes of the promoters of World Superbike Racing.  However, that has changed now.  Next year onwards, MotoGP will allow production based engines being fitted into custom chassis and will have an engine capacity of up to 1000cc.   Remember this point we will come back to it.

The 250cc two stroke racing class was changed to the new Moto2 four stroke 600cc class (at the behest of Honda and it killed European manufacturers Aprilia and KTM in the process).  To differentiate this from World Supersport which has production 600cc motorcycles, Moto2 had only Honda supplying 600cc engines to teams who could make or buy custom chassis.  This year is the last for the oldest category of racing, the two stroke 125cc class.  This will be replaced next year by the new Moto3 class which will use single cylinder 250cc four stroke engines (Honda at work again and Aprilia and KTM again being the losers here).  Now can you see the big picture emerging?  If you can good, otherwise here it is for you.  The Americans love dirt track racing in the form of Motocross and Supercross.  The most popular category of engine there is the 250cc four stroke, single cylinder.  So engines used in Motocross and Supercross will find their way in a different state of tune and in a different chassis into the Moto3 class.  Result no engine development costs that will go through the roof.  Synergies mean less spending that can be spread across different forms of motorsport.  And the Moto2 class now.  Right now it is Honda alone supplying the engines, but in the near future the same laws that apply to claiming rules teams in MotoGP class next year can be used for the Moto2 class as well.  This means that there will be the opening up of the 600cc category for production based engines in prototype chassis.  This means no additional costs of engine development.

We asked you to remember the 1000cc MotoGP category a while ago.  Let us to revisit that.  World Superbikes run on 1000cc engines.  Now MotoGP will allow prototypes along with production based 1000cc engines in prototype frames.  This means at some point in the future, motorcycle manufacturers may go the Formula1 way, where they will only supply engines and not the chassis.  So MotoGP could become what Moto2 is only difference being engine capacity.  So teams can choose from BMW, Aprilia, Kawasaki and MV Augusta engines and put them in Suter, FTR, Moriwaki or Tech3 frames.  Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha engines too will be eligible.  But in all likelihood with the exception of one or two teams most will go for Japanese engines anyway and therefore the European manufacturers will not be of great significance here.  Now do you get the full picture?

This is typically business dictating the rules of the sport.  Over the new rules of MotoGP the promoters of MotoGP, Dorna and the promoters of World Superbikes, Infront are already fighting.  With next year getting nearer, the fight will become more intense.  The FIM will have to adjudicate and in all possibility it will be in favour of MotoGP and Dorna, because they have more muscle.  World Superbikes and MotoGP have small grids, though the Superbike grid is slightly bigger with 21 motorcycles compared to the 17 on the MotoGP grid.  Last year the Supersport grid was all but non existent due to everyone moving to Moto2.  This year it has grown mainly due to an influx of riders and teams from Hungary, Russia, Poland, etc.  But it could just fall again next year if the new teams do not have funding.  So what are we going to see?  One series instead of the two?  Will GP racing be international while Superbike and Supersport racing become national and feeders to the GP series?  Who knows, but in the world of business anything can happen, and since this sport is dictated by business, anything is possible in this sport as well.