Last week, the House of Representatives passed a "Buy American" bill to require the Department of Homeland Security to only buy products with more than 50% of their components mined, produced or manufactured in the United States. As one tech trade representative said, they won't be using computers or cell phones since none meet that standard. One more example of blunt force … [Read more...]
Motorcycle Top Speed
A few months ago there was a news story about a motorcycle rider ticketed for 205mph which later turned out to be a bit optimistic on the part of the police given that they were timing the rider with a stopwatch from the air. Production motorcycles are fast but not quite that fast. I started thinking about this in the last few days because another car, a Bugatti, is now … [Read more...]
Star Motorcycles
Yamaha has announced the creation of a new brand, Star Motorcyces, which will basically be all of their cruiser motorcycles split off from the Yamaha brand. Seems the cruisers have been popular and have attained their own identitiy so Yamaha decided they could stand on their own. What I don't get is that they will not have their own dealers, they'll just have some different … [Read more...]
More Chinese ripoffs
Since Pennsylvania is the home state of The Kneeslider, this story hits a little closer to home. Zippo lighters are manufactured in Bradford, PA, have been since they started. Seems a company in China was caught with 750,000 knockoffs but their home province hemmed and hawed about doing anything. This article mentions a few other things the Chinese seem to have "designed" and … [Read more...]
GM sues China’s Chery
Back here I said GM was ready to sue Chery over the copying of the design of the GM Daewoo Matiz. Well, they're suing and good for them. If the Chinese want to compete in the world markets with all of the vaunted capabilities of their billions of people, the least they can do is create something original. Malcolm Bricklin, who's planning to import the Chery, seems to see no … [Read more...]
Vespa ad photos
So there I was, browsing through the June, Cycle World magazine and I come across this rather interesting ad for Vespa scooters. Now, that's a scooter accessory a lot of us would order if we had the chance so I check out the Vespa website for the USA and she's nowhere to be found. Guess it's not in our catalog, so I wandered over to the Italian website and the first thing you … [Read more...]