We met the Coopop way back at the 2023 EICMA show in Milan. With its deliciously off-centre looks and funky colours, it was right up our street. Back then, the little bikes were still called the Fuki and the Cox, respectively. Our guess is that when buyers started asking about riding their Cox hard or how to go about polishing their Cox, the company decided a name change was wise. It probably was. The Coopop Rugged GS has now finally and firmly landed in the Netherlands. So it is time to get properly acquainted. The Coopop Rugged RS finally on ...

The Honda Hornet 1000 has finally landed! And if this were 2006, we would be absolutely blown away right now. But it isn’t, and we aren’t ...

All Good Things… After being gently weaned from Harley Davidson’s teat as a stand-alone brand for electric motorcycles, they have done well. Not in terms of sales or profit obviously. Don’t be silly. There are still close to zero humans out there in the real world buying electric motorcycles. Dutch sales figures, for example, show a barely two per cent market share in bike sales for all electric motorcycles combined. BMW sells roughly seven times that number all by itself. No, where they have done well is finally bringing a cool-factor to whizzy biking. Actually, they have so far been ...

Around this same time last year, RunningWide stated that predicting the outcome of even as little as a single motorcycle race is dumb. We then immediately proceeded to do some predicting. And, with three out of four prophecies eventually turning out to be correct, Nostradamus can go right ahead and suck it. Right then, off to the races. Like last year, we’ll predict World Supersport (WSSP), World Superbike (WSBK), Moto2 and MotoGP championships. WSSP In the 600cc class that is no longer really a 600cc class, it will again be the lowly 600 that prevails. Last year, the Ducati V2 ...

I Think I Hate My Favourite Brand It is as we feared. Triumph has just announced their ‘brand new motorcycle’. It is called the Daytona 660, and there is bit of a problem with that. The Love Now I should start by stating very clearly that I like Triumph a lot. If Triumph and I would have been classmates when we were young, we would have been besties for ever and ever for sure. We’d like the same girls, fight bullies together, read the same comics and build a treehouse. I like their bikes, their engines, their weird British way ...

We Meet At Last Years ago, we first laid eyes on the concept drawings for a flat tracker styled, electric Harley Davidson motorcycle. We were instantly captivated. The idea of this behemoth of the church of internal combustion attempting something this far left of centre was just wild. Early signs Early Impressions Earlier this year we attended the European launch of the LiveWire S2 Del Mar. After years of polishing, this was the result of that original idea. Did it meet our expectations? Were we still as excited as we had been years ago? Yes, if not more. The machine ...

RunningWide's Crystal Ball for 2023 Can you feel it? That night-before-Christmas-like giddiness. Winter is nearing its end and that means that it is about time to get sucked into a brand new season of motorcycle racing. This very weekend, the World Superbike Championship is going to kick us off in Australia. By the time MotoGP and BSB join in at the end of March, the WSBK boys will already be six races (2 race weekends) into the season. Trying to predict the outcome of a full season of motorsports ahead of time is nonsense, as it should be. History has ...

For the past couple of years, MotoGP fans have seemingly been utterly spoiled. On the starting grid today we find the prototype racers of 6 major manufacturers. All of these bikes have proven beyond doubt to be podium-worthy and even race-winning machines. The gaps between the factory teams and independent squads have diminished so that we frequently see independent riders on pole, on the podium and even on the top step. For the riders themselves, a similar story applies. Take a look at the results for the 2021 season and you will find that of the 22 riders on the ...

Men… Middle-aged, bearded, tattooed, leather-clad, bandana loving, chrome-licking, insecure, overcompensating men. Harley Davidson’s target demographic in a nutshell, according to my upbringing. Hence, I have never taken them too seriously. Strangely though, I find myself becoming more and more attracted to them. The brand, that is, not the men. You see, the social circle I grew up in never cared much for the American bikes. Nobody seemed to ever pay them any mind. After all, riding a Harley was not real riding, was it? Horse riding would come closer to riding a ‘real’ motorcycle than riding a Harley would. At ...

For a three day adventure on Yamaha’s Ténéré 700 Rally Edition, we went to the first place nobody ever thinks of; Lithuania. Our friends at OffroadLitouwen.nl (offroadlithuania.com) run five of these top spec T700s for their guided tours around the, surprisingly beautiful, Lithuanian countryside. While our host, Rik, taught us the fine art of off-roading, we got to familiarize ourselves with the Yamaha. More on the whole trip will follow. First, let’s talk about that Ténéré. What is it? The Ténéré is labelled as an adventure bike, but that class of bikes has become quite a broad spectrum over the ...

Just when you think that you have heard it all, Harley Davidson claims it has created a modern adventure bike. I know, I know… stop chuckling. ‘Modern’ is not really a word to be easily associated with the American firm. They generally blend together as well as Mentos and Coke ...

We can't wait to fire this thing up ...