Motus Mst-R
MOTUS MST-R
CW FIRST RIDE
America's V-Four sport-tourer
BLAKE CONNER
cycleworld.com/motus
AMERICANS HAVE LONG LOOKED beyond their own borders for high-performance, sporting motorcycles. For years, there were no (U.S.made options until Erik Buell took a swing at it; unfortunately, he was always swinging with one hand while Harley-Davidson had the other tied behind his back. Now that man is out on his own (see "EBR 1190RS," August, 2011), and hopeFully, he'll soon be joined by Motus Motorcycles and its MST-R, an American-made V-Four sport-tourer that currently is undergoing durability testing in prototype form.
Allowing a journalist to ride a raw and unfinished prototype motorcycle is practically unheard of. It’s akin to a sculptor showing an art critic a block of marble with a few cuts in it and asking, “What do you think of my masterpiece so far?” So, when I had a chance to ride the MST-R this early in its development, it was a rare opportunity. Because we have known about the MST-R for quite a while and have reported on its progress (“Meet the Motus,” February, 2010, and “American Sport-Tourer,” June, 2011), we’ve looked forward to throwing a leg over what has promised to be a very exciting motorcycle.
After my first ride, all I can say is that it didn’t disappoint.
Back in 2008, the MST-R was just a blot of ink on a cocktail napkin, so the fact that Motus principals, designer Brian Case and company president Lee Conn, had just ridden from the company’s home base in Birmingham, Alabama, to California on a pair of test mules is impressive. Once the duo had a concept on paper, they partnered with Katech,
Inc. and Pratt & Miller Engineering, two highly regarded American companies, to put the ideas into physical form. Katech designed and built the 90-degree, liquid-cooled, longitudinal-crankshaft, 1645cc V-Four engine. “It was about a year after the initial sketch, in January of 2009, that we fired up the engine and had it running,” said Case. And Pratt & Miller (winners of multiple 24 Hours of Le Mans, Rolex
24-hour at Daytona and Sebring 12-hour events with Corvette race cars) used its extensive experience to, among other tasks, design the chassis.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the MST-R’s engine is that instead of traditional port fuel-injection, it uses GDI (gasoline direct injection), spraying fuel directly into the combustion chambers.
“Katech had the technology and a lot of experience with it in automotive racing,” Case said. “At the time, we hadn’t done the research to see if anyone else had ever put GDI on a motorcycle; we just thought it sounded cool. Then we discovered that no one had done it on a four-stroke production motorcycle.”
Part of what makes GDI technology possible in this application is that the engine’s rev limit is set at 8000 rpm; making direct injection work in higher-rpm applications is difficult, we are told. “We also are working on a port-injection system that is readily available,” Case adds. “So, the induction system is still under development. It has to fit within our performance goals, and it has to be reliable and predictable, especially at small throttle openings, like in turns and when you roll the throttle back on. We don’t want it to do anything unpredictable.”
Prior to my ride, Case went over the pre-flight checklist of procedures I would have to follow on the fully instrumented, data-recording prototype. Quite a few aspects of the bike’s performance are still being evaluated, tested and tweaked, since the earliest that Motus expects bikes to go into production is a year from now.
Once warmed up, the V-Four settled into a nice idle that is intentionally set
a bit high to compensate for the fuel mapping in the very lower end of the rev range, which currently is a bit rough.
The V-Four’s 75-degree crankpin offset produces an uneven firing order, creating a sound that can only be described as a pair of Ducati Twins coupled together. In other words, it sounds sweet!
After I stalled the engine a few times while coming to terms with a heavy throttle-return spring and stiff clutch, there were very few surprises in store. Heading toward twisty Ortega Highway, I tried to get a sense of how well the GDI functioned and soon determined that in its current state, the mapping is actually quite good. When I asked Case if this level of fuel-delivery refinement was a product of GDI or simply because the system was in a non-EPA-compliant state of tune, he said that they are already working toward compliance and feel that they should meet those requirements fairly easily, possibly without catalytic converters.
I did my best during my all-day test ride to make the injection system behave poorly, but except for a bit of jerky on-/off-throttle reaction caused by stiction in the heavy throttle mechanism, it performed quite well. Steady-state cruising was good, too, with very little sign of surging or hunting.
Knowing that the Motus’s pushrod, two-valve-per-cylinder powerplant has a lot of Chevrolet racing technology in its genes put thoughts of muscle-car-like torque in my head, and the MST-R lived up to those expectations. The V-Four delivers huge real-world grunt over a broad spread of revs, even from below 2000 revs, making shifting through the tight and positive (albeit a bit stiff) gearbox
more sport than necessity. Twin counterbalancers keep vibrations to an almost imperceptible level; I felt just a touch through the footpegs and handgrips.
Once the road turned curvy, I took my time working up to speed, not knowing what to expect. But after a short period of familiarization, I found that the chassis—anchored by a trellis-style frame and swingarm, both of which are constructed of chrome-moly steel—handled beautifully, with light, neutral steering (26 degrees of rake, 4.25 inches of trail), plush but well-composed Qhlins suspension and familiar, trusted Brembo Monobloc brakes. With a shorter (58.0in.) wheelbase than any other “classic” sport-touring model on the market and a claimed dry weight that undercuts most bikes in the class by more than 100 pounds, the Motus felt more sportbikelike than tourer.
When I asked both company principals what they ultimately hoped this bike would be, Conn said, “We wanted to create the most-satisfying bike from 20 to 90 mph. We’re not racers, we’re street riders, so between that range, the MST just had to destroy.”
By the time my ride ended, I was impressed, having been truly surprised at how well the prototype performed. If Motus is capable of making the necessary refinements to the MST-R and can get it to pass emissions requirements while maintaining even the current level of fuel mapping, this will be one hell of a fun motorcycle. But we have to reserve final judgment until we can ride an actual production model.
Currently, Motus plans to start producing motorcycles in 2012. Judging from my experience on the prototype, that doesn’t seem unrealistic. But lots of hurdles stand in the way, including reliability testing, establishing a dealer network, creating a parts inventory, conducting service-technician training and determining a reasonable price. But Motus isn’t trying to conquer Honda tomorrow; it’s just attempting to earn a sliver of the sport-touring pie. If its goals are kept realistic and its investors happy, Motus has a great chance of becoming America’s next sportbike company. □
