Remember the Honda Motocompo, the cute folding scooter from the early 1980s that could fit in the trunk of a car? We’ve often thought that Honda should revive it, and it looks like we’re not alone.
Katalis have just released details of their latest creation, and it’s the spiritual successor to the Motocompo. Called ‘Spacebar,’ it weighs just 132 pounds [60 kg] and it’s a smidge under 4’8” long—about a foot shorter than a modern Honda Grom.
With the bars folded down, the Spacebar is just 34” tall. So it’ll fit in the back of a subcompact car, just like the original Motocompo did. The big difference is in the power unit: Katalis’ version has a 1200W motor sucking juice from a 48V lithium battery.…
We love Royal Enfield North America’s Build. Train. Race. program for two reasons: it shines the spotlight on women in motorcycling, and it produces killer bikes. Now in its second season, it’s a grassroots initiative where a selection of women riders are each given a Royal Enfield 650 twin to customize for racing. Then they spend some time training, before duking it out on the track.
Last year’s edition of BTR stuck with flat track racing only, but Royal Enfield have now added road racing to the list.
The full roster includes 16 women in the US and four in Brazil, and the bikes are the INT 650 (called the ‘Interceptor’ outside of America) for flack track, and the Continental GT for road racing.…
The garage tools and techniques might be the same, but there’s not a lot of overlap between race and custom bike building. At the simplest level, it’s a Venn diagram, with ‘function’ in one circle and ‘form’ in the other.
Occasionally a bike falls into that tiny overlap though, and the results can be incredible. This outlandish WR450F rally raid bike comes from the French outfit Le Motographe, and ramps up the style without sacrificing an iota of performance.
The two founders of Le Motographe are product designer Jérôme Mawois and metallurgist Yvan Bertona. Their workshop is in the small town of Castries in southern France, and the influence of their day jobs is clear to see in this beautifully crafted build.…
