Moto News: New Retro Honda, Most Expensive Harley & More!

Welcome back to another episode of our weekly Moto News Roundup, where today we'll be looking at some incredible scenes at Jerez, Foggy's return to Goodwood, a special BMW car to celebrate a special birthday, huge discounts being offered across the industry, perhaps most excitingly this week as well, the potential for a retro version of Honda's fantastic CB1000 Hornet, then maybe another new retro on the way, but this time from Suzuki. Harley just ruined our most expensive bikes list of 2025 and we'll round off with what looks like it could be the end of my career. But first up, Yamaha were meant to be holding their international press launch last week for the much-anticipated new R9 sports bike down in Spain at the famous circuit of Jerez. Now if you follow some of the other motorcycle media and YouTube channels on Instagram then you may well have caught wind of this one, but basically there was a huge amount of rain in the region surrounding the circuit and it resulted in the track being completely flooded and also, you know, half of the gravel trap being dragged across it. Now impressively Yamaha did manage to get the entire press launch operation moved to another circuit nearby so it did go ahead at least a little bit of riding anyway the next day, but of course as you might expect with that amount of rain there is a little bit of lasting damage to the track. Initially there were actually concerns that this might prevent this year's MotoGP round from going ahead which is due in April, although a statement on the circuit's Instagram profiles said that for the fans peace of mind the circuit guarantees that the repair works guarantee that the Spanish Grand Prix will be held as scheduled from April 25th to 27th and only activities closer will be affected by these cleaning and damage repair works. So a bit of a relief for MotoGP fans of course and they also go on to say that nobody was injured in these floods which is again great news and that the majority of the track is still fine as long as it gets a bit of a cleanup although the last corner has such an immense volume of water that it did cause some of the track to lift so there will be some resurfacing there. Terrible luck for Yamaha of course investing all that money in making the launch happen and it probably wasn't the optimal conditions for showing off the bike to its best. Awful costly news as well for the track owners but hopefully things will be back to tip-top condition soon. Meanwhile here in the UK it's not too long until the annual Festival of Speed at Goodwood which is a brilliant event that celebrates both two wheels and four with virtually a non-stop stream of incredible vehicles making their way up the famous hill for all to see hear and smell. In fact I actually did it a couple of years back with Triumph I rode the Daytona, the Moto2 Special Edition and also the Speed Triple and I gotta say it was an incredible experience and definitely an item checked off the biking bucket list but as opposed to me wobbling along in second gear sat bolt upright with no idea where the track's going and no idea as to how to ride particularly quickly you'll probably be more interested to hear that this year a biking legend will be present aboard a legendary bike with Carl Fogarty set to ride his 1995 World Superbike Championship winning Ducati 916 on all four days of the event. Now it runs from the 10th to the 13th of July and his appearances form part of a broader celebration of World Superbikes this year with 40 bikes and several other riders said to be attending all from the 1990s which they're calling a bit of a golden era of the series. Sounds really rather tempting I might try and snap up a ticket this time and of course you can see the bikes when they're on display too not just when they're riding up the hills so do head to the Goodwood website if you fancy going along too. Now from one motorcycle racing legend to another though it was Valentino Rossi's birthday the other day actually his 46th you probably don't need me to point out that 46 was actually famously his race number. I think that's actually called an angel number like when the clock shows 11 minutes past 11 and people give it more gravity and meaning than they would any other random time and so BMW seem to be into angel numbers too not wanting the occasion to pass unnoticed. You see in recent years since retiring from MotoGP he's actually turned to four-wheel racing with BMW M-Works and so they've announced this special edition M4 CS which is available in two different specs to celebrate this angel number birthday. One's called the sport and the other the style and there'll be just 46 of each car offered globally and it's already a bit of a beast it's 550 horsepower the chassis is absolutely tuned for the best possible handling and then to make it even more special and specific to Valentino Rossi they finished it off with the number 46 dotted all over the car both externally and internally and then also added some fluo yellow accents over the top of the blue paintwork which are instantly recognizable as part of his personal brand. Now I've seen wildly varying reports on the price of this one but suffice to say it's in the hundreds of thousands and it might sound like a lot but it does include the opportunity to go and meet the man himself. BMW state that an exclusive bonus that comes with purchasing a BMW M4 CS edition VR46 is the opportunity to enjoy a very special two-day experience in Italy. Day one features a visit to the VR46 motor ranch in Tavullia including a barbecue and a chance to have a little chat as well with Valentino Rossi himself on day two you'll head to the Misano world circuit Marco Simoncelli for a special BMW M driving experience with the latest BMW M models. Assuming cars it'd be nice if it was the bikes as well but all the same it sounds like an incredible experience and the car looks pretty decent too I'd love to know what you make of it though is it a very slick looking set of wheels or would it just be a little bit too cringeworthy to actually drive around in it? I think I'm on the fence but let me know what you think down in the comments. Hopefully you're actually aware that the cost of living across the world pretty much right now is squeezing everyone and as a result it's a very tough time to sell motorcycles but if you are in the market for a new bike anyway and you do have a little bit of spare cash kicking around well it could be a very good time to buy because there are plenty of heavy discounts out there in order to try and keep shifting some units KTM we already covered this one got stuck in early of course with their massive backlog of a quarter of a million bikes that they're trying to get rid of so you can get one two or three thousand pounds off a lot of their models but also another factor is that you know euro 5 plus emissions regulations have recently come into effect and so a lot of dealers are having to pre-register 2024 bikes that weren't euro 5 plus compliant but now of course they're actually having to offer a bit of a deal in order to move them on now Bennett's Bike Social regularly post a good roundup of the best deals so I'll link to them down in the description below so you can check it out but as an example one dealer is offering six grand off a brand new 2024 BMW R18. Greenham Kawasaki are selling off their hybrids and electrics at almost half price or in some cases I think for the electrics even less and while admittedly both of those bikes the R18 and the hybrid Kawasaki's are a little bit niche there is 1500 quid off an NT1100 for example 1500 quid off a Triumph Daytona 660 and many many more examples of really quite good deals so like I say do check out their article but I guess you know if there's a bike you've had your eye on for a while now but maybe just couldn't quite afford it given what we're seeing across social media at the moment with all these deals being announced it might be a good idea to get down to your local dealer and see if you can get yourself a bit of a steal retro bike lovers though might want to hang on for just a few weeks because rumors have emerged from Japanese magazine Young Machine who were normally on the money with this sort of thing that Honda are about to launch a retro version of their brilliant CB1000 Horner and a few years back they actually previewed what a new liter inline four powered retro might look like with this brilliant CBF concept and with the recent announcement of the final edition of their CB1300 in Japan well it looks like it might be the right moment to make the concept into a production reality you see the 1300 was discontinued in the UK and Europe over 10 years ago now and while they've kept it going in their home market up until this year it will leave a little bit of a hole in the lineup that would be neatly plugged by a CB1000F the original concept bike was built upon the same platform as their CB1000R with some of the swish features like the single-sided swing arm but according to Young Machine a final production version is set to be built upon the more affordable chassis of the new CB1000 Horner that bike i think it's fair to say has set a new standard in terms of the naked market this year with 150 horsepower fireblade derived inline four engine and a sweet handling chassis all for just £8,999 or £9,999 for the upspec SP version with the Brembo brakes and the Ohlins rear shock so that there'd be no need to mess with this winning formula in terms of the riding dynamics but i do think you know the more modern angular looks aren't always to everyone's taste and so i'd certainly very warmly welcome a bit of an alternative especially if it looked anywhere near as good as that concept bike at the time of launching it they said it was heavily inspired by Freddy Spencer's 1981 AMA Superbike Championship winning Honda CB750F as you can see from the bodywork and the paint job but i also love the part modern part retro look of the lighting and also the more contemporary overall stance with stuff like the fatter tires and the upside down fork so yeah fingers crossed and also Cycleworld report that both the Osaka Motorcycle Show and the Tokyo Motorcycle Show are taking place very soon on i think consecutive weekends at the back end of March and so if it does come to fruition then we really could find out quite soon as always though let me know what you think of this one down in the comments think it's like that's not the only new retro bike rumored to be coming soon out of Japan with reports elsewhere that Suzuki are working on a more old school looking variant of their parallel twin powered GSX-8S naked and it makes absolute sense Kawasaki have the Z650RS Yamaha have the XSR700 and both of those bikes are built upon a more modern looking naked platform so it seems like converting the GSX-8S would be a fairly efficient way for Suzuki to get a slice of the retro market now the parallel twin in the GSX-8S is smooth and torquey it's a really nice engine to ride it's got a nice note at the exhaust too and so for me it seems like the perfect versatile candidate for a bit of a throwback style bike and I guess something that looked a bit less angular than the quite divisive looking GSX-8S would eventually make for a fine replacement for the aging SV650 my question for you though is what bike from Suzuki's history deserves to be the visual inspiration for a new retro model perhaps something from the 70s with a round headlight like the GT750 or maybe a new more affordable baby katana or you could even go down the sort of GP race replica route with the signature Suzuki colors as well maybe something like an RG500 kind of look all of them sound pretty good to me but let me know down in the comments which you'd pick now we recently uploaded our most expensive bikes of 2025 video where we look at the most spendy bikes from each of the major motorcycle manufacturers on the market for this year and it's a video that we make every year with a bit of a chance to look at some of the more desirable kind of dream bikes that we might not actually get chance to review and ride in the flesh but within about a week of publishing it Harley Davidson have already managed to put it out of date with the announcement of a frankly ridiculous looking new road glide that's said to cost a staggering $110,000 that's almost double the 60 grand of the MV Agusta Super Veloce 1000 that was top of our list although when you dig into the specs of this thing you can kind of see why it costs just so much named the CVO Road Glide RR this is basically a king of the baggers race bike but for the road and it gets a massive 131 cubic inch version of their Milwaukee v-twin which for those of us who operate in ccs is 2147 or just over 2.1 liters that means it can make about 153 horsepower peak and 150 pound feet of torque or about 207 newton meters if you are metric and i've read that this makes it the most powerful engine that they've ever shipped in a bike from the factory just pipping the 150 horsepower of the revolution max that goes in their panamerica adventure bike there are all manner of changes to the engine internals to get those kinds of figures but also the chassis has been absolutely tricked out too with the fully adjustable suspension package from ohlins on both the fork and shock and some rather special looking polished brembo gp4 rx calipers taking care of the braking up front now the bodywork is largely carbon fiber to try and get the weight down along with the titanium silencers from Akrapovic and also just take a look at this cnc swing arm it's absolutely stunning and a piece of art in its own right in fact i believe they've saved 50 pounds versus the standard cvo road glide which is already i think a little bit lighter than the standard non-cvo road glide and that's about 23 kilograms and so you're probably thinking wow that must be pretty light then well nah the harley website quotes a weight in running order of 785 pounds or 356 kilograms i do think it looks quite cool though i really like the paint job and all the sort of special finish that you get from all these high-end parts but trying to give a bike the sort of super legera treatment yet with a starting point that's almost twice the weight of a an average bike maybe seems like a bit of a waste of 110 000 if you want something that can make 150 horsepower that can go around corners pretty well that gets some owing suspension and brembo brakes that doesn't weigh too much either then you could just try a honda cb 1000 hornet sp for about 10 at the cost as well truth be told i'm already slightly freaking out about the amount of ai generated content that we're seeing in the motorcycle niche on youtube now it's springing up everywhere and while generally you'd say the content is absolute drivel and that's coming from me and also the bikes in the thumbnails uh are not even real people still seem to be clicking them and watching them even though it's obviously fake and so perhaps we're on borrowed time here at motobob with our very old-fashioned cameras and microphones to make content one thing that i thought was safe though was the reviews ai can't go out and ride motorcycles and tell you whether they're any good or not can it well maybe we're actually screwed now because it seems like it can and it's already a lot better at riding than i am as well this video on the rai or robotics and ai institute's website shows a demo of a self-driving two-wheeler that's powered by a tech called reinforced learning which is essentially like trial and error they say and it's said to be similar to how humans make decisions anyway i for one welcome our new motorcycling overlords and if they need an out-of-work youtuber to clean the bikes pump the tires up just give us a shout as always though i'd love to know what you think of it so do let me know down in the comments although do be careful what you say because they probably are reading them and i'll leave you with last week's episode on the screen now so you can give it a click and give it a watch if you haven't already we looked at some of the massively improved sales figures from triumph and what's behind them a ridiculous 400 horsepower speed triple from thornton hundred and also a couple of new bikes that look very cool indeed and that you can actually win do hit subscribe for more of the latest motorcycle news like this right here on motobob a massive thanks for watching today and we'll see you in the next video