Ups & Downs
UPs & DOWNs
ROUNDUP
UP: To the Celeritas (Latin for "speed") art exhibit, for raising U.S. awareness of Riders for Health. Held this past July at the SURU gallery in Hollywood, California, the event was conceived and curated by actor John Hensley and musician Joe Hahn. A silent auction for 14 helmets painted by fine artists, a set of leathers reworked by Darren Romanelli and a Suzuki Hayabusa customized by Barry
McGee raised $66,000-all going to RfH. Founded by Barry and Andrea Coleman and former Grand Prix racer Randy Mamola, Riders for Health (wwwriders.org) man ages and maintains vehicles used to deliver health care and other vital services to rural communities in Africa.
UP: To KTM, for giving consumers the superstar treatment with its Factory Service Promotion. Owners of current KTM SX, XC, XC-W and EXC motorcycles can have the same technicians who tune the machines of the company's professional
riders spin the wrenches on their bikes. All the tricks and secrets normally reserved for the privileged few will be available to regular Joes. Engines and/or suspen sion will be hand-tuned to produce maximum performance, just like the pros. Orders are placed through your local dealer, who will arrange for the components to be shipped to KTM North America's race shop, where the work will be executed. For more information, visit your local KTM dealer.
DOWN: To the alleged Economic Stimulus Package, for taking its own sweet time in blunting the recession. In the motorcycle market, overall new-bike sales were down approximately 50 percent from second-quarter 2008 to second quarter 2009. The downturn has forced manufacturers to cut production. Harley-Davidson, for instance, just announced it may ship as few as 212,000 V-Twins in `09, a 30-percent reduc
tion following a second-quarter plunge in earnings. H-D also announced it would cut 1000 jobs-this on top of an earlier 1500employee cutback.
A UP: To Star's VMax, for getting itself a spiffy new set of duds for 2010. Gone is last year's malevolent black paint, replaced by a bright candy red. Light your fire? Then get on down to your local Yamaha shop. Mr. Max is still a limited production model and has to be special ordered before November 30, 2009. As we went to press, suggested retail price had not been set. For the latest, log on to the VMax microsite at wwwstarmotorcycles. corn/newvmax
