Local Businessman Keith Overton Partners with Celebrity Paul Teutul Sr. on New Orange County Choppers-Themed Restaurant and Attraction St. Petersburg, Fla. (Nov. 17, 2020) – Paul Teutul Sr. of Orange County Choppers fame and area hospitality executive Keith Overton today announced plans to open the OCC Road House & Museum, a new restaurant and attraction based on Teutul’s wildly popular OCC brand. Located adjacent to the 9.5 acre complex that is home to Bert’s Barracuda Harley-Davidson, the one-of-a-kind destination restaurant will be decked out with a fleet of Paul Sr.’s custom choppers featured on the hit Discovery Network series “American Chopper,” along with hundreds of rare items from his vast collection of biker memorabilia, many never before seen by the public. With more than 11,000 square feet of indoor space, the family-friendly OCC Road House will be one of the area’s largest full-service restaurants, with indoor and outdoor seating for more than 325 guests to enjoy a full menu of classic American fare. The restaurant will also feature a massive 25,000-square-foot pavilion for concerts, outdoor dining, a billiards hall, floor games and other entertainment, and a retail store loaded with merchandise and collectibles for bikers, friends, and fans. The new OCC Road House & Museum is expected to break ground by the end of the year, with an anticipated opening in May 2021. “As a long-time biker and St. Pete resident, I’m fired up to partner with Paul Teutul Sr. and bring something new and exciting to the dining and entertainment scene that will appeal to locals looking for great food, fun and live entertainment, and to motorcycle enthusiasts and OCC fans from all over the world,” said Keith Overton, owner and developer of the OCC Road House & Museum. “We expect this unique, destination experience to be an instant success, and a concept we will plan to immediately license to other interested restaurant owners throughout the U.S. and Europe.” Overton, a 35-year veteran of Florida’s hospitality industry, served as President at TradeWinds Island Resorts for the past 25 years. During that time, he and his team worked with Bert King of Bert’s Barracuda Harley-Davidson and Paul Sr. to create the overwhelmingly successful St. Pete Beach BikeFest, which attracted 75,000 visitors to the area annually. “That experience got me thinking about other opportunities to build on the synergies from St. Pete Beach BikeFest and Bert’s brand-new destination dealership, and to further collaborate with Paul Sr. on something bigger and badder,” said Overton. Partnering with entrepreneur, TV celebrity, motorcycle builder and founder of Orange County Choppers Paul Teutul Sr. was an easy decision for Overton, as the two have become friends over the past decade. According to Overton, Paul Sr. has long-standing ties to Florida and the local community, and a huge following in the Sunshine State. The OCC Road House & Museum will be an extension of the OCC brand, showcasing Teutul’s one-of-a-kind creations in an upscale, industrial environment that will make guests and fans “feel like they’re hanging out with Paul in his workshop.” The restaurant and museum will be packed with motorcycle memorabilia Paul Sr. has personally collected over the past three decades, including an enormous “patch wall” with tens of thousands of patches he has been gifted by members of the military and first responders over the years. Overton and Paul Sr. welcome military personnel and first responders, past and present, to help continue to fill the patch wall, leaving their mark for others to see. An Orange County Choppers Wall of History will feature custom choppers in a “chronology of chrome” detailing the brand’s more than 20-year evolution. Building the OCC Road House & Museum adjacent to Bert’s Barracuda Harley-Davidson dealership was a natural choice for Overton as well. One of the top performing Harley-Davidson dealerships in the country, Bert’s Barracuda has a loyal following and attracts a steady stream of bikers and brand enthusiasts from far and wide. In addition to this built-in customer base and the region’s enduring tourism appeal, the restaurant’s central location in Pinellas County will make it a convenient option for lunch, Happy Hour, dinner, and late-night entertainment for the many nearby businesses and residents of the greater Tampa Bay area. A full year-round calendar of live nightly entertainment, major concerts featuring regional and national acts, and other charity and special events at the campus pavilion is also expected to generate additional traffic to the restaurant and museum. At a cost of more than $6.5 million to build, Overton expects the OCC Road House & Museum to provide a significant economic benefit to the City of Pinellas Park and the entire area by creating more than 50 construction jobs, and roughly 90 full-time and 20 part-time restaurant positions. “The timing of this announcement and the project is intended to bring some very positive news to residents and businesses in this community who are dealing with the negative effects of the pandemic. Paul, Bert and I are very confident about Florida’s recovery and the success of this newly created concept,” added Overton. For more information on the OCC Road House & Museum, visit OCCRoadHouse.com or call Keith Overton, President & CEO, at (727) 432-3428. For media inquiries, contact Kelly Prieto, Vice President of Hayworth PR, at (386) 677-7000 ext. 2.

It better be a good one, goddammit. About 1970 I completed another sweat-soaked tour off the coast of Vietnam, my last one. The winding down war took on a pot-smoking air of wonderful R&B tunes, loose broads, long hair and a constant party.

More and more of the guys on the ship experimented with drugs and the half dozen originals, including myself took a back seat, concerned that the man would come down on us.

You don’t want to get busted in the service. They take a much harsher attitude toward crime, and the brig isn’t fun. Shortly after we returned to Long Beach, the Captain decided a vacation to Acapulco would be a blast. I took the week off to start to look for motorcycle parts and hang out with Laurie. We were cool, when we were together, but her religion was beginning to be a downer in a world gone wild and nuts.

When the ship returned, I rode my Sportster to Dago and slipped on board and a brother met me in the radio shack on the main deck. “You wouldn’t believe the shit we scored. “Wanna try some.” I passed, while he lit up a massive doobie behind a tall rack of vacuum tube radio receivers. The dense pungent smoke and rich herbal smell filled the compartment. “It’s cool,” He muttered through the billows of smoke, but I didn’t like the overt vibe.

I slipped up to the OE office to check in and return to my duties repairing and maintain UHF line of sight communications equipment. Off the coast of Nam, the bastard, 5-inch double-barreled cannon outside my compartment hatch would make a coffee cup jump 6 inches each time it fired. It fired a great deal during my second tour, sometimes 4-hours a day. I shattered more than one coffee mug. During the third tour we mostly cruised the coast looking threatening bad.

Admiral Zumwalt took over the Navy and allowed enlisted men to grow beards.

There was a lot of talk around the ship about the score in Mexico. Seems a group of guys bought weed and stashed it in tall heavy paper burn bags and canvas life vests.

All day long guys were smoking weed and joking about the heist and the party in Mexico. About 4:30 I slipped into my small steel coffin jammed with communication equipment and considered rolling a joint for after I left the base. A couple of other guys were going to stop by and give me a taste of their score before heading out—they never showed.

I stashed my shit in a secure location about 5:30 and as soon as I left my area next to that solid steel 5-inch semi auto gun emplacement, I heard the bad news. The ship had been raided and about a dozen guys were hauled off the ship along with their 50 pounds of weed.

The ship was battleship gray. The work compartments were gray and I believe galley was painted white along with the mess hall and sick bay. I grew up believing battleships were gray for a reason and so was equipment. I can’t get over the recent paint fad in this country and the use of gray tones. Bullshit. Gray is for battleships, equipment and steel, not homes.

Gray set the tone for that cold winter day in Dago when our brothers were handcuffed and led off the ship to be sent to the base brig. Brigs are bat-shit bad, torture chambers for treasonous acts, attacking officers, deserters and murderers. They weren’t designed for kids who stashed bags of weed on a ship.

This was a new world to everyone from young guys who smoked some weed in high school, to guys who had never touched the stuff and were now experimenting. I would bet half the guys on that ship didn’t know what marijuana was. But suddenly, for a handful of young sailors the consequences of their party actions hit home hard.

The military establishment didn’t know what the hell to do with these guys. Immediately, they were threatened with prison and dishonorable discharges, which would fuck with their lives forever. I remember discussing the options with some young sailors who broke down and cried in shame and fear for the notion that their folks would find out and they would no longer have rights to the G.I. bill for college after the service.

The brigs were ruled by hardcore Marines who didn’t like sailors and treated prisoners as if they were thrust back into a bootcamp on steroids. They weren’t allowed to do anything without a Marine guard’s permission, nothing, including taking a piss, standing, sitting or eating. They couldn’t speak, except to say, “Sir, yes sir, may I take a piss sir?” Any infraction could mean a nasty baton beating or standing at attention and forced to piss your pants.

Weeks passed with only rumors on board. Slowly, the word came down that most of them would be allowed to leave the service with general discharges. Even then, they found themselves in a dreaded gray area between dishonorable and Honorable. It allowed them to leave without punishment, but also without any benefits. A couple of these guys were married and it hit them particularly hard. First, they would have no income. And at the time rebellion wasn’t accepted within most American families. These guys went home to shame and disgrace.

Here’s an official description:

“Bad paper” – or less-than-honorable discharge status from the military – can cause veterans shame, stigma, and ineligibility for VA benefits. Many veterans, and some VA health care professionals, assume that a less-than-honorable discharge status on a veteran’s discharge documents automatically disqualifies them from healthcare, disability compensation, educational assistance, and other VA benefits.

Though entitlement to benefits is unlikely if you received a less-than-honorable discharge status, there are some exceptions made by VA now. There are a variety of types of less-than-honorable discharges that carry different consequences in post-military life currently, but not in 1970. Additionally, VA can make a case-by-case determination of “character-of-discharge” that could potentially allow service members to access healthcare and other benefits, if (and only if) you request medical treatment or submit a disability compensation claim.

The ship sailed from San Diego to Long Beach for pre-tour repairs with the help of Todd’s shipyard adjacent to the Long Beach Naval Base. I remember bumping into one of my high school pals, Larry St. Marie, who had joined a union along with some other guys from high school. He was welding on our ship. I rode my modified Sportster over to Long Beach to see some to the guys from the High School fraternity I was involved it for a short time. We had gang wars with an opposing school. They were still hanging out and I didn’t get it. It was time to move on.

My XLCH had a 6-over front end, taller risers and was stripped and custom painted. I didn’t fit it, but it looked good for a guy’s first custom bike.

I stayed in touch with Larry. He got into hot rods and I believe experienced a nasty divorce that altered his thinking in a negative direction. Divorce can do that except for us outlaws who cherish freedom almost as much as love.

I was determined to leave the St. Paul before it made another passage across the Pacific. I put in for a transfer but was denied then an opportunity surfaced and I escaped to the USS Maddox.

It was a reserve Tin Can or Destroyer. A training ship that was sorta famous. Nobody ever discussed it. 

Here’s the story from Wikipedia:

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: S kin Vnh Bc B), also known as the USS Maddox incident, was a disputed international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved both a real confrontation and a fabricated confrontation between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved that only the first attack actually happened.

On Sunday, August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations, was claimed to have been approached by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron. Maddox fired three warning shots, and it was claimed the North Vietnamese boats attacked with torpedoes and machine gun fire. Maddox expended over 280 3-inch (76 mm) and 5-inch (130 mm) shells in a sea battle.

According to the false report: One U.S. aircraft was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed, with six more wounded. There were no U.S. casualties. Maddox was “unscathed except for a single bullet hole from a Vietnamese machine gun round”.

It was originally claimed by the National Security Agency that a Second Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead, evidence was found of “Tonkin ghosts” (false radar images) and not actual North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that the August 2 USS Maddox attack happened with no Defense Department response, but the August 4 Gulf of Tonkin attack never happened. In 1995, McNamara met with former Vietnam People’s Army General Võ Nguyên Giáp to ask what happened on August 4, 1964, in the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident. “Absolutely nothing”, Giáp replied. Giáp claimed that the attack had been imaginary.

The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by US Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted US President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression”. The resolution served as Johnson’s legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated, regarding the first incident on August 2: At 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier’s gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards (9,150 m). At about 1505G, Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist [North Vietnamese] boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first.

There you have it. The Maddox had a small crew and on weekends reservists came on board for training. Once or twice a year we made training sojourns to Mexico, like Mazatlán or San Francisco. Once we cruised beyond San Francisco through inland canals lined with mothballed ships. It was an eerie sight dark and forboding like a war vessel cementary.

A short biker came on board for training, Andy Hanson was building his first chopper and wanted to share it with me. He lived in Culver City and was learning how to rebuild engines from Bob George, a big round, smiling man who had an engine rebuilding shop in his back yard. We started to hang out and I started to learn about engines from Bob, who had built a wild dual-Shovelhead drag bike.

I went to the drags with these guys and when Bob popped the clutch all the primary chains snapped. Bob, the mellow, mad scientist lived until his death with a tiny angry girlfriend who screamed and yelled about anything. Bob went onto start to race at Bonneville and built a Streamliner around his dual-engine, stroked Shovelhead configuration.

I also started to hang out with Lose Bruce who worked the parts department at Long Beach Harley, where I bought my Sportster. His guys lived in North Long Beach and prepared all year for a run up north. They built cool shit and did a lot of drugs. One of the guys was hit by a truck around Gorman on the Golden State Freeway and they all returned to handle the business of the funeral.

Then they peeled out again and only got as far as San Jose where they crashed a Hispanic concert and Bruce was stabbed a bunch of times but survived. It was the era of the reds and they drove bikers wild. I was still in the service and I smoke weed, but hardly even drank.

On the artistic side these guys built bikes that had a certain flair. They were mechanically tight, not radical in any respect. And they understood the rigid frame code. Nothing messed with the lines of the frame. They only painted the tank and frame. Usually, no front fenders were used and the rear fenders were generally flat trailer fenders and chromed. At the time, we could only get trailer fenders and the old ribbed Triumph fenders.

I’ll never forget riding to Andy’s pad for the first time. He had his frame on a milk crate in the living room. It had been painted a wild metallic purple with silver flames on the Sportster tank. There weren’t any custom tanks at the time, except cheap little Peanut tanks. An extended glide was mounted to the frame with chromed neck cups, shaved trees, extended chromed legs and the lower legs were bare chromed tubes with no tabs for any fender or brake anchor. There were no disc brakes at the time.

Andy was learning Harleys fast from Bob and other builders. I believe he worked days as a machinist at an aerospace plant and at night in his garage on bikes. I helped him start H.E.S. (Harley Engine Specialties). His first product was an aluminum pressure plate for 4-speed clutches. It was a hit. I think Ben Kudon is still making them at American Prime.

While still on the Destroyer I did permenant shore patrol duty, which was actually only 30 days. Throughout the Holidays of 1970 I roamed the back streets and pike in Long Beach.

My concept of the years here is fleeting. I’m trying to stick with my first custom bike experiences before I became involved with Easyriders Magazine. But occasionally, like with Bob George I’m skipping around. I introduced Bob to Joe Teresi, the Jammer boss, and that’s how we ultimately held the world land speed record for motorcycle for 16 years.

Meanwhile back in 1970 shit was happing fast. Like today our society faced upheaval and didn’t know what the hell to do with it. We went from crew cuts and straight-laced behavior to long-haired radicals, war protests and choppers. Everything felt cool and free, and the girls went wild. Their clothes changed, their habits changed and sex changed.

We all experienced it and had to make conscious and unconscious decisions. I went from being a clean-cut serviceman with a beard to a longhaired biker going to Long Beach City College welding class to escape the service a few months early. That’s where I met Seymour, a member of the Outlaws MC who introduced me to Hangmen in San Pedro. He wanted me to become a member, but that wasn’t in the cards. I was beginning to sort through the outlaw code.

Maybe it was all about age? Just after the service I started school in Long Beach on the G.I. Bill and begged for a job at U.S. Choppers in the city of Industry. We rode with LA Sheriffs who were crazier than the Outlaws because they could be. Most cops were like the brig marines. They just wanted to kick ass and take names. We were the rebels on two wheels.

I still find it fascinating. The chopper clan represented sex, fun and artistic style as if you can build a motorcycle and ride it into an alternate universe. But some guys just see metalflake as money. More and more I begin to understand the nature of man. You can line-up five guys in a room and have a bad ass walk in and give each one the finger and say, “Fuck you, punk. You ain’t shit.”

One brother might pull a gun and blow the sonuvabitch away. Another might punch him out and another might run or make some lame excuse. Yet, another might negotiate with the guy. This equation can be applied to five guys looking at the ultimate chopper and giving his opinion. They could range from the money aspect to honor and respect to, “I wouldn’t ride that piece of shit if you paid me.”

I’m also trying to understand the lure of motorcycles and women. Laurie stood in the way of the adventure to come as did many women. For a long time, I was around bikers and outlaws who didn’t treat women well and were racists. I didn’t follow that code. I treated women with tenderness and respect, but when they stood in the way of freedom, I was forced to move on.

That also applied to various aspects of my life. If I didn’t like the way folks were treated or the direction the business was going, I had the balls to say adios, and usually it was at just the right time.

I’ve got to say that I love women and have studied them all my life. The same applies to motorcycles. There’s a sexy aspect to a chopper, it’s long and lean, tight and alluring. Here’s the perfect example: fat rear tire bikes. I’ve never built a bike with a tire bigger than 180, although I think my Indian has a 200. I didn’t like the fat tire mechanical obstacles. Then the brothers, or maybe Bert Baker came up with the right-side drive transmissions. But to me they made a bitchin custom motorcycle look like it had a fat ass.

Now I’m really fucking with the time frame. See you next time.

–Bandit

For many of us around the country, the colder months have hit… and they’ve hit hard. Looking for a warm-weather escape so you take that bike out of storage? We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite warm-weather rides perfect for cruising this time of year. You can send us a postcard to thank us later. You can send any season riding story to Bikernet.

Pack your bags and beat the winter blues by checking out one or more of these winter riding destinations.

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by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com

Not a week has passed in the new year and Japanese bike maker Honda already announced the first changes to the lineup for the 2021 model year. As you might have guessed, these changes first and foremost target the iconic Gold Wing family.

The touring bike line, in production in the Japanese stables since 1974, bets even more on its ability to handle whatever needs the rider has for long stretches of road. With that in mind, the biggest change pertains to the trunk capacity of the Gold Wing Tour.

According to the Japanese, the trunk can now hold two full-face helmets, thanks to an increase in capacity by 11 liters, to a total of 61 liters. Additionally, the passenger seat has been improved by giving it a “more relaxed angle” and taller profile, but also by making it of thicker foam.

Last but not least, the 45-watt speakers have been bettered as well, there is now a standard XM radio antenna, and optimized automatic volume-adjustment. The bike family now also supports Android Auto alongside the existing Apple CarPlay integration.

“Honda listens to its customers, a fact that is highlighted in our latest new-model announcement,” said in a statement Lee Edmunds, Senior Manager of Powersports Marketing for American Honda.

“In the case of the Gold Wing and our smallest street-legal CRF models, the 2021 iterations reflect improvements that were highly requested by people who ride them every day, and the motorcycles are better as a result. We look forward to customers getting the chance to experience the updates themselves.”

Sporting all red turn signals as the single most important visual upgrade, the new Gold Wing family goes on sale in February in five variants, with prices starting at $23,900 for the standard version and going to as high as $32,600 for the Gold Wing Tour Air Bag DCT.

Photos and text by Bill May

I decided there should be some warm weather in south Texas. I never rolled down there before. I wanted to see Del Rio and the Big Bend. I rolled out of Oklahoma City on a Sunday morning in the middle of May.

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Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System With Intercom

The Boom! Audio 30K Bluetooth Headset is Harley-Davidson’s flagship wireless headset engineered to simplify and extend wireless communication. The 30K Headset comes with two modules (1 Bluetooth and 1 Mesh) and offers an exceptional integrated experience when paired to the new Boom Box Radio.

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Your Weekly Biker Bulletin from Inside the Beltway Your Motorcycle Riders Foundation team in Washington, D.C. is pleased to provide our members with the latest information and updates on issues that impact the freedom and safety of American street motorcyclists. Count on your MRF to keep you informed about a range of matters that are critical to the advancement of motorcycling and its associated lifestyle. Published weekly when the U.S. Congress is in session.

Biden Picks Transportation Secretary Last month President-elect Joe Biden selected former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a onetime Democratic primary rival, to lead the Transportation Department. Mr. Buttigieg dropped out of the race in March and endorsed Mr. Biden along with other moderate Democrats. Leading the Transportation Department, Mr. Buttigieg is expected to play a prominent role in the incoming Biden administration’s push to rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges. Mr. Biden campaigned on a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, much of it related to transportation. Mr. Buttigieg would take over a department whose most critical functions are setting transportation regulations and distributing vast sums of money, mostly to states to fund their respective highway, road and transit systems. If confirmed by the Senate, he will begin his tenure, as pressure mounts for the Biden administration and Congress to reach a deal on paying for infrastructure spending. Congress faces a September deadline to reauthorize federal funding for highways, transit, rail, and safety programs. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle point to infrastructure spending as a way to stimulate the coronavirus-ravaged economy.

House of Representatives Fails to Pass Profiling Resolution On January 3rd the 117th Congress was sworn in and all bills and resolutions not agreed to from 2019-2020 must be reintroduced. The MRF is disappointed that, despite over 130 bipartisan cosponsors, House leadership failed to bring this the motorcyclist profiling resolution, H. Res. 255, to the floor for a vote. The issue of motorcyclist profiling continues to gain traction on Capitol Hill and the growth in cosponsors over the last 5-years is a testament to the work of individual MRF members and state motorcycle rights organizations. The first version of the resolution introduced during the 114th Congress had only 18 cosponsors. Two years later the version before the 115th Congress had 37 cosponsors while this version had 139 cosponsors. Additionally, the Highway Reauthorization bill that passed the House in July of 2020 included language that focused on motorcyclists profiling. Despite this setback our champions on Capitol Hill remain in the fight. The leadership of the House Motorcycle Caucus has already reach out to the MRF about plans to reintroduce the profiling resolution in early 2021. The MRF remains committed to seeing the House of Representatives do what the Senate did in 2018, go on the record about the need to end motorcyclists profiling!

by Daniel Patrascu from https://www.autoevolution.com

Back in 1949, the year when parts of this here bike were born, humans were not even dreaming of becoming space explorers. The world was fresh out of the worst years of its existence, a time when most of the planet’s nations tried to obliterate each other in more or less creative and horrific ways.

They tried to do so by using rockets, too, an invention that eventually helped open up humanity’s appetite for space exploration. After the war ended, Germany’s most prestigious rocket scientists, Wernher von Braun and his Nazi V-2 rocket team, found themselves working for the Americans. Faster than you could say “Man belongs wherever he wants to go,” we went to space, reached the Moon, and sent a small army of rovers to Mars.

The fast pace of space exploration was of course sung in literature and movies, but also on mundane objects such as teacups or T-shirts. And yes, even on cars and motorcycles.

This 1949 Harley-Davidson Panhead is one of the objects celebrating space exploration. It does so by displaying one of the most intricate and detailed custom paint jobs we’ve seen on such a project.

Despite the rather limited real estate available, the bike reeks space no matter where you look: there is a big NASA logo visible on one side, a couple of planets and a self-propelled astronaut on top of the tank, suns, moons, and alien UFOs on the side of the thank, and a fancy human spaceship on the frame.

The motorcycle is part of the larger lot of two-wheelers known as the Legends Motorcycles Museum collection. No fewer than 36 of them, including this one, are going under the hammer in April, during the massive Mecum auction, which is to be held in Las Vegas.

There is no estimate on how much the bike is expected to fetch, but those with a big enough passion for Panhead Harleys and space can boldly go where their competitors cannot, as this one is selling with no reserve.

by Kyle Hyatt from https://www.cnet.com

This promises to be a much more approachable and affordable naked bike from the Italian brand. Enough power, very light weight and top-tier safety tech make the Tuono 660 pretty appealing.

The Aprilia Tuono V4 is one of the most over-the-top, terrifying, wonderful and life-affirming machines I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding. It’s massively powerful, thanks to its 1,077-cc V4 engine, it sounds like half of the world’s angriest Ferrari, and it’s packed to the gunwales with brilliant electronics designed to keep your tires on the pavement. It’s also not a bike I’d recommend to most people as a first, second or even third motorcycle. It’s just overwhelming.

Aprilia seems to understand that issue with its Tuono V4, so it’s done the only sensible thing and lopped two cylinders off it, calling it the Tuono 660 and making it a much more accessible motorcycle. It teased the Tuono 660 alongside the RS 660 sportbike at EICMA in 2019, and now it’s getting its official debut, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

The Tuono 660 makes a reasonable 95 horsepower (the V4, for comparison, produces over 170 hp) and has a curb weight of just 403 pounds. This means that things with the baby Tuono should be plenty rowdy but not quite so hectic as on the V4.

Like its bigger brother, the Tuono 660 sports a more upright riding position than the similarly powered RS 660, which means it should be more comfortable for longer rides. It comes with a KYB suspension with limited adjustment, paired with decently sized, radially mounted Brembo brakes. While miles away from the high-zoot stuff on the more expensive V4, this combination should be more than adequate for some hardcore canyon carving for most riders.

To help make the 660 more friendly for newer riders, it comes standard with Aprilia’s excellent APRC rider-aid suite, which includes multilevel traction control, antiwheelie control, cruise control and user-selectable engine maps. Corner-sensitive, multistage antilock brakes are standard as well.

The 2021 Aprilia Tuono 660 will be available in the US towards the end of Q1 for a starting price of $10,499 before dealer fees. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Ducati’s all-new Monster and KTM’s 790 Duke.

Pirelli DIABLO ROSSO™ in Numbers: Five Million Tires Sold Plus a New Upcoming Fourth Generation

Since 2008 the DIABLO ROSSO™ Brand has Been Using the Technology Developed by Pirelli in the FIM Superbike World Championship to Offer Uncompromising Riding Performance

ROME, Ga. (January 7, 2021) – The Pirelli DIABLO ROSSO™ tire family enters the new year with record numbers and celebrates the achievement of an important milestone: over 5,000,000 radial tires sold since its introduction on the market in 2008.

The origins of DIABLO™ and DIABLO ROSSO™ brands

DIABLO™ represents Pirelli’s excellence in the world of high-performance tires designed for two-wheeled vehicles. The DIABLO™ product family, after its introduction into the market in 2002, has rapidly evolved to include in its broad portfolio tires dedicated to other market segments, from professional racing to the supersports road arena. The DIABLO™ brand brings with it more than 18 years of experience, technology and victories in the most prestigious national and international two-wheeled competitions.

Within the DIABLO™ range, the DIABLO ROSSO™ products are dedicated to road machines of a sport leaning. The name DIABLO ROSSO™ was born with the intention of honoring the distinctive color of the Italian national motorsport team since 1922, which was the color racing red (PANTONE® 185C).

The most prestigious motorcycle manufacturers in the world choose DIABLO ROSSO™ products as original equipment for their top models, while many respected international magazines and websites consider DIABLO ROSSO™ products a benchmark for this sector. Among the leading products of this family there are currently tires such as DIABLO ROSSO™ Corsa II, DIABLO ROSSO™ III and DIABLO ROSSO™ Scooter, still reference tires in their respective segments.

Thanks to the high performance of each of these products, supported by the ability of Pirelli engineers to anticipate the demands of a constantly evolving market, and to use cutting-edge materials and technologies, the DIABLO ROSSO™ product family has been able to reach the important milestone of 5,000,000 radial tires sold worldwide.

Respectable numbers that allow Pirelli to announce with great satisfaction and pride the fourth generation of this tire family, with the arrival of DIABLO ROSSO™ IV, the new supersports product created to continue the history of this successful brand. As the direct successor of DIABLO ROSSO™ III, DIABLO ROSSO™ IV raises the bar of this product range even higher, pushing the qualities of handling and grip to the highest levels, both in dry and wet conditions.

DIABLO ROSSO™ IV is dedicated to motorcyclists who love a more dynamic riding style, owners of supersports, hypernaked or crossover bikes who demand from a tire a high level of grip, on all types of asphalt and weather conditions, as well as precise feedback and great handling to make the most of the high performance of their bikes.

For more information about the complete line of Pirelli motorcycle tires, please visit Pirelli.com