TaylorMade has announced their nomination by the BritWeek Business Innovation Award in the category of Design. In partnership with UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), BritWeek organizes a two-week program of events in California to highlight and celebrate businesses with joint operations in both the Golden State and the United Kingdom. The program emphasizes creativity, innovation and excellence in design, science and technology, business, art, cuisine, fashion, film and television, literature, music, philanthropy, retail and sport.

TaylorMade is one of three companies nominated for the Design category and the winner will be announced at the BritWeek UKTI Innovation Awards Ceremony scheduled for April 25th which will be held at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, CA. The nominees are chosen by a panel of judges including Chairman of Walt Disney International Andy Bird, Design Director for Jaguar Ian Callum, and Internationally Recognized Creativity Expert Sir Ken Robinson.

Taylormade Racing first became known for its carbon-fibre components developed on race bikes using F1 technology and manufacturing processes. Born from a unique partnership featuring the designs of UK-based John Keogh combined with Engineering Director and ex-pat. Paul Taylor who leads the prototyping and manufacturing operation in California, TaylorMade has been manufacturing a highly successful line of exhaust systems for super sport motorcycles for over 12 years.

Engineering Director and company owner Paul Taylor is English and has lived and worked in California for several years. His background is in bike racing technology and he has worked with several manufacturers, and private teams developing winning race bikes using innovative and cutting edge technology.

Another Brit; TaylorMade ‘s styling expert John Keogh trained as an automotive designer in the UK and Switzerland and has been a professional motorcycle stylist for eighteen years. Mainstream projects have been with Triumph and Buell-Harley-Davidson, where he was a major member of the design team on the radical Buell Firebolt and Lightning as well as working with various race teams and car racing manufacturers.

Contact:
Cassie Bond, Media Relations
sales@racetaylormade.com
(818) 781-8123
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2012 Honda CBR1000RR Slip-on Exhaust Kit complete with muffler, installation hardware, and guide.

Restore the top end power of your US spec bike with the addition of an IRC. This simple plug and play unit will add +6 hp to your top end power curve when combined with the Power Commander V.

Check out our carbon fiber accessories for your CBR1000RR!!

Installation Video:

Owner Pictures:

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Milan Show

By: JohnKEOGH

Contact John

The annual EICMA motorcycle show takes place early November in Italy’s second largest city; Milan. The venue is the new FieraMilano to the North West of the city which features eight huge exhibition halls. While the show has shrunk in recent years the motorcycles, scooters, electric vehicles and bicycles that feature still manage to fill four of the giant halls as well as test-tracks and demonstration areas spilling out in the grounds. To get round the majority of the exhibits requires stamina, stout footwear and at least three days. This can be fuelled by copious quantities of espresso and parma-ham sandwiches!

This year’s highlight was the launch of Ducati’s seminal 1199 Panigale which takes the sportbike ideal to new levels of insanity by featuring the most powerful V-twin engine ever produced and no chassis! The actual press launch took place on the Monday evening before the show in Milan’s Teatro dal Verme not far from the La Scala opera house – an appropriate setting for another chapter in the drama that is Italian motorcycling.

The new bike’s low weight – 164kg dry – is down to an aluminium casting that forms both headstock and airbox, connecting the all new SuperQuadro engine directly to the rest of the bike. This hugely over-square (hence the name) masterpiece still has the cylinders at the signature 90 degrees and desmodromic valve actuation but now features gear and chain drive rather than belt. The inspiration for this unique engineering layout came from the 2009 Ducati motoGP bike which similarly featured a carbon-fibre airbox-as-chassis but, proud as they were of the new baby, Ducati staff were downplaying the GP connection because this year’s bike featuring that design and put into the hands of seven-times World Champion Valetino Rossi has been a disaster.

Instead Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali wheeled on this year’s World Superbike Champion Carlos Checa to talk about how the new Panigale benefitted from the race development of the Superbike rather than Rossi’s GP bike. Domenicali: “We took the best of the 1198 WorldSuperBike and put that into the 1199”. Somebody then asked Checa what his favourite characteristic of his race-bike was – “The chassis” was the not-quite-on- message answer being the very bit they’ve got rid of.

As well as getting rid of their characteristic tubular frame Ducati have also binned the famous twin underseat exhausts and copied… Taylormade! The two under-belly canisters are very similar to how Taylormade have been doing exhausts for the last four years albeit without the nice carbon-fibre fairing panels. Putting the exhausts underneath rather than in the tail benefits mass-centralisation, allows slightly lower weight through shorter exhaust runs and free’s up the back to be stylishly stubby – not much pillion accommodation here! The only real problem with Ducati’s groundbreaking new design is that it doesn’t really advance motorcycle design except in the narrow field of ultimate performance and even that’s looking a bit shaky at GP level. (see separate article: “Where Now for Superbike Design?”) link.

Ducati shenanigans aside the other significant launches were two versions of BMW’s new scooter and Triumph’s Explorer. The loss of Japanese sales has allowed both these companies, along with Ducati to pick up large chunks of market share in a number of model areas from commuters to sportsbikes. The best selling European bike of the last few years, BMW’s GS large trailie, has some direct competition from the Triumph. This 1215cc triple blatantly copies BMW’s flagship in having shaft-drive and off-road pretensions and similar styling to the German adventure-tourer.

As far as other Superbikes go there was a new Honda CBR1000RR or Fireblade as it’s known to us Europeans. However this is no radical re-think with the up-dates being confined to suspension and a re-styled, sharper front fairing; watch out for a new Taylormade exhaust for this bike in Spring ’12. Yamaha’s R1 has undergone an even more subtle up-date with smaller undertail silencers and a front re-design that’s so miniscule you can hardly tell. The Kawasaki ZX-10R remains unchanged but for graphics and Suzuki couldn’t afford to do much with the GSX-R1000 either except some minor internal details, monobloc brake callipers and a single rather than double exhaust – watch this space for new Taylormade systems for both these bikes as well as the Honda.