INTRODUCED IN 2007, the 1098 replaced the 999 model which, though excellent, had never captured the hearts of Ducati enthusiasts because of its looks. The new bike featured horizontal headlights, an underseat exhaust, and a single-sided swingarm that harkened back to the earlier and much loved 916 range. The capacity of the V-twin engine was […]
SOME PEOPLE CONSIDER the 61 “Knucklehead” to be the bike that put Indian out of business; others claim it was the bike that saved Harley-Davidson. Either way, this was Harley’s first real production overhead-valve twin and, introduced in 1936, it was a groundbreaking machine. The crucial new feature on the bike was its all-new overhead-valve
INTRODUCED IN 1904, the FN was the first successful four-cylinder motorcycle. Designed by Paul Kelecom, the original design had shaft drive, magneto ignition, splash lubrication, and the benefits of the vibration-free, four-cylinder engine. It was one of the first serious attempts at an integrated design for a motorcycle rather than the usual bicycle-with-ngine-style machines of
FRATELLI BOSELLI MONDIAL CHOSE to advertise its products through racing and won the 125cc World Championship in 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1957. While the racing machines were exotic o.h.c. and d.o.h.c. devices, most production models were orthodox o.h.v. and two-stroke lightweights. Like other Italian manufacturers, FB Mondial equipped its sports models with low handlebars and
ONE OF THE WACKIEST BIKES built in the 1970s, the Fantic Chopper was an ideal mount for those aspiring to the wild world of the movie Easy Rider. But where the actors enjoyed the effortless throb of a large-capacity Harley-Davidson V-twin, Fantic riders had to endure the manic wail of a smallcapacity two-stroke engine. And
STANDARD MILLE WAS THE FIRST large capacity superbike from the upstart Italian company Aprilia when it was introduced in mid-1998. The more expensive R version, equipped with better quality suspension, appeared alongside the basic model in 2000, and both were given a substantial makeover the following year. This is a 2001 model. The Mille is
(b. Feb. 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, Eng.-d. June 9, 1870, Gad’s Hill, near Chatham, Kent) Charles Dickens is generally considered the greatest British novelist of the Victorian period. His origins were middle class, if of a newfound and precarious respectability; one grandfather had been a domestic servant, and the other an embezzler. His father, a
(b. Sept. 26, 1888, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.-d. Jan. 4, 1965, London, Eng.) Thomas Sterns Eliot was an American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor who was a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized
(b. June 13, 1865, Sandymount, Dublin, Ire.-d. Jan. 28, 1939, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France) The Irish poet, dramatist, and prose writer William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. In 1867, when Yeats was only two, his family moved to London, but
(b. Jan. 29 [Jan. 17, Old Style], 1860, Taganrog, Russia-d. July 14/15 [July 1/2], 1904, Badenweiler, Ger.) Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He is regarded as the outstanding representative of the late 19th-century Russian realist school. Chekhov, the son of a former serf, became a