The 2010 Long Beach International Motorcycle Show

Southern California is famous for numerous things:  Hollywood, great beaches, blondes, earthquakes and rush hour traffic.  SoCal also happens to be hallowed ground for the sport of motorcycling.  It's home to a few famous and historic road racing and motocross tracks, the US headquarters to the Japanese "Big 4" manufacturers, and a bevy of aftermarket companies.  The Los Angeles area is claimed to be the largest single market in the world, so yes, motorcycles are a big deal here and the show at Long Beach is the most important show of the 12 city Progressive International Motorcycle Shows tour.  There were North American debuts from Triumph, BMW and Ducati, a bike builder custom bike competition, a stunt show starring Jason Britton and special appearances by Nicky Hayden, Ben Spies and various other moto-celebrities.
A lot has already been written about the bikes that made their North American debuts because they made their world premiers at Intermot or Milan, so I'm not going to rehash what has already been said, but instead I'm going to give you my take on what I saw at Long Beach.

First and foremost, the biggest splash at the show was made by Triumph.  They unveiled 7 new or redesigned motorcycles.  The Speedmaster and America received mostly detail updates.  The new Thunderbird Storm is a really a nice version of the already successful Thunderbird 1600.  It gets the currently in vogue black-out treatment, but with a shiny finish instead of the trendy matte treatment.  I like my bikes shiny, thank you.  Also introduced was the Daytona 675R featuring Öhlins suspension.  I have a thing for those gold forks and shock, plus the metallic white paint and red subframe are tasty!  I don't know about the new Triumph logo on the tank.  I'm a bit of a traditionalist, myself and would hate to see the old logo go away.  The Tiger 800 and 800XC follow the concept of the BMW R1200GS and R1200GS Adventure but unfortunately also follow the styling pretty closely of the BMW F800GS.  I wish for these new models, that Triumph would have made an attempt at a design statement.  The last intro Triumph made was the newly redesigned Speed Triple. I'm still not a big fan of the styling, but at least it does look updated and finished.  Past Speed Triples have looked very unfinished to me with wires and plumbing hanging everywhere.  Kudos to Triumph for making the bike look better engineered.

America/Speedmaster Unveiling

Daytona 675R Unveiling

Tiger 800/800XC Unveiling

2011 Speed Triple Unveiling

2011 Speed Triple Walk-Around

I was really looking forward to seeing the new BMW K1600GT and GTL.  I'm a big fan of inline-six cylinder motorcycles counting the Benelli 750/900 Sei and the 1981-82 Honda CBX as some of my all time favorite motorcycles.  Plus, my day job is at a BMW dealer, so I have a bunch of customers chomping at the bit to replace their aging K1200LTs who wanted a full report.  From the looks of things, BMW have successfully built a  worthy successor to the LT.  The K1600 in person, does not look as big as it does in all of the photos.  Don't get me wrong, this is a big bike but had imagined something very long and wide.  BMW did a great job packaging  the big six along with all of the techno gizmos known to man!  They claim the GT is the sportier of the two and is meant more for twisties.  I'm not sure how aggressive I'd want to get on a technical twisty road.  You really sit far back on this thing.  I assume the engine puts the weight over the front wheel that your body would on a real sportbike and I guess you'd have to trust it, but the jury is still out on whether this big bike likes twisties.  I guess a test ride would be in order!  BMW?  I think the bulk of sales for these two will be of the GTL.  It doesn't pretend to be sporty and looks to be the right tool for the job of soaking up lots of leisurely miles comfortably.

K1600GTL Walk-Around

Ducati...  I'm not sure exactly what to say here.  The media event they held was really odd to me.  Believe me, any time I get a chance to defend Ducati, I do.  I have owned quite a few of them over the years and would say that they are one of my favorite marques of all time.  Their press presentation started with a fashion show with loud dance music and models strutting around.  After the music stopped, Ducati's marketing officer came out and gave a short overview of the new for '11 Diavel then followed by a brief interview with Nicky Hayden.  Trust me, I'm not one to complain about beautiful women in skimpy outfits but I was expecting a bit more substance from them.  The aforementioned Diavel was on hand.  I'm not a fan of this bike.  It's the two wheeled equivalent of the Porsche Panamera.  It may be a money maker at some point, but it's just wrong.  You think they would have learned from the Indiana of the mid '80's...

Ducati Fashion Show

Mission Motors unveiled their MissionR electric racebike.  It looked pretty well put together but in my opinion, electric bikes or cars for that matter don't make sense.  I can probably (and will) dedicate a whole article on why electricity will be, in the long run, more expensive and open a Pandora's Box of infrastructure problems but at least the motorcycle industry is going about development the right way: via racing!

MissionR Unveiling

My impression going away from the show was that despite the economic downturn of the past few years, motorcycle manufacturers are investing in new product and technology which is good for us.  With the customary display of custom bikes smattered about the show, I've noticed a trend of going away from the traditional American Chopper/Cruiser towards the classic, minimalist, 40's style Bobber and Café Racers even.

View my photo gallery here.