Ups & Downs
UPs & DOWNs
DOWN: To Kawasaki, for giving the cops a better mount with which to chase you! Kawasaki’s new Concours 14 Police motorcycle is just the cruise missile that law enforcement needs to run down speeders. We have to say that we preferred knowing that The Man was mounted on old air-cooled KZ1000Ps. Looks to us that Team Green is playing both sides; how else can you explain the fact that they make the ZX-14, ZX-10R, Z1000, ZX-6R and civilian Conc 14 for us but make this rapid radar ship for “them!”
UP: To American Rally Ace Jonah Street, for dominating the eight-day Rally Mongolia. Street won four of seven stages in the 2300-mile event, becoming the first American to win the rally and one of two, including his teammate Mike Shirley, everto race in the event. At the finish, Street and his borrowed Yamaha WR450F had a three-hour cushion over second place.
A UP: To new MV Agusta owner Claudio Castiglioni, for buying his former company back from Harley-Davidson for the rumored symbolic price of $1 ! If true, this is the second time that Castiglioni has been able to pull off this financial feat. In the 1990s, he bought Cagiva back from the Malaysian Proton Group for the same rumored amount. H-D paid $75 million to Castiglioni for the company in 2008 and then invested in excess of $30 million.
The trick will now be for Castiglioni to make the refurbished company profitable again before the treasure that H-D left behind vaporizes.
