We have all heard that Buell is gone, if you haven't then you haven't been visiting the site often enough, because I wrote about it and you should give yourself a sound telling off! Anyway, Erik Buell the company's founder is busy with his new company Erik Buell Racing, which with the backing of Harley Davidson builds Buells for track use only. This freed up the company's former VP of engineering Abe Askenazi to chase other interesting and he is now to lend his 14 years experience at Buell to Zero Motorcycles.

If you haven't heard of Zero, then you should spank yourself again! They are an electric motorcycle manufacturer moving forward in leaps and bounds and the experience of Abe Askenazi can only be beneficial.

It seems the Suzuki Gladius has been honored with a prestigious Japanese design award... this award has apparently been voted by industry "specialists" including motoring journalists...

The award is for more than just its attractive design (really? they are talking about the same Gladius? Ed.) the Gladius took the gong for its comfort and handling in both urban and freeway situations... I guess that part makes sense, it is a gentle machine around town and a bit of fun in the twiisties... even if it is lacking the power to make it really entertaining.

Either way we offer our congratulations to Suzuki for this honor.

Well we all knew they were dysfunctional but with Paul Junior leaving the show and talk of huge law suits... Senior sues Junior for a rumored million dollars and the sale of all OCC shares to Senior... the show has finally been axed. I have to say I am more surprised that it took so long that that it happened. There is talk of one of the Teutul's getting a solo show... if they did would you watch it? Or would you prefer (like me) a show that was bigger on build and engineering and less on yelling at each other? Unlikely that you will get that from TLC... it would appear that the punters like to watch people yell at each other and throw things... go figure. Sorry to all you American Chopper fans, you will have to find something else to amuse you...

I had the absolute pleasure of attending just one day (Saturday) of the 3 day long extravaganza that was the NZ Classic Motorcycle Racing Register's 31st Classic Festival. This event, held at Auckland's Pukekohe Park Raceway had an absolutely fantastic showing, I had an absolutely fantastic time wandering around the pits and the carpark (bikepark???) both of which were overflowing with the beautiful, weird, wonderful and just plain amazing motorcycles... Then there was the racing. I had a hard time believing that these absolutely immaculate classics were being absolutely hammered around the track.