Comments on: Motorcycle Streamliners at Vintage Days

By: Andyj

Andyj — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:29:29 +0000

Joe Gioielli,
No way would Mr. Vetter put an aircon in his draughty hyper mpg bike. It would take all 250cc’s to power the air con! His goal is 100mpg doing 70mph into a 30mph wind while carrying four bags of groceries.

Todd:
A C5? His bike is made from a Honda 250 Scooter. Not small! – and it is bright yellow. For scale; The headlights are off a Prius. The Peraves unit is taller than a van.

Anyone who wants to fuss over taking a passenger. *Yawn*. Easy!
Reshape the front seat slightly near the hip. Build another seat 18″ behind the front one and fit pegs.

By: Joe Gioielli

Joe Gioielli — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:21:25 +0000

I think this is the shape of things to come. Here in the south you just cook under the sun and bake in the heat. A streamliner would make an ac unit possiable. No more redlight heatstroke.

As for it bing unsafe, a “cage” will save some and kill others. Same as helmets and seatbelts. All you can do is play the odds.

This will be more a replacement for a car, than a motorcycle.

By: DucatiGuy

DucatiGuy — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:28:20 +0000

As a former motorcycle courier I’m more aware than most of the need to re-engineer the motorcycle. The way I see it, the riding position was designed for people who previously rode horses, and it’s never moved on from there. Even the best (mainstream) designs are dangerous, hard to control, uncomfortable, and hopelessly aerodynamically inefficient.

FF designs like those above are functionally great – the Ecomobile gets my vote in the comfort stakes, the Quasar (dated now) looks promising – but do they have to look so dorky? The fact is, the General Public don’t buy their transport for practical reasons, otherwise why buy a Hummer? Or a (new) Fiat 500?

What’s required here is something like the combination of Italian design and American money and marketing that’s been so good for Ducati lately.

By: David

David — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:15:58 +0000

a square peg, round hole exercise

By: marvin

marvin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:58:03 +0000

The high mileage scooter reminds me of the quasar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar_(motorcycle) while the ecomobile looks to me like something from the cover of popular mechanics from the fifties. In both cases I mean this as a very sincere compliment. Peraves seem stuck in that we don’t make many so they are expensive so we don’t sell many trap. I would love one but for the cost I could have 2 or 3 other dream bikes. It seems that to own one I may have to find a crashed K100 a knackered fighter trainer plane and a whole lot of nous and skill behind the sofa.