BOUGHT A daily newspaper today? Notice it's a bit thin? That's because it's the silly season - Westminster is on its hols, sunning itself around the private beaches of southern Europe. So harassed news editors are frantic for anything interesting going on...
Luckily, the bike world is still turning - yay. And it's turning out charming stuff like this - a projected V5 superbike from an outfit called MondialMoto. Not, sadly, the F.B. Mondial firm of old which made the Piega VTR1000 SP1-powered superbike from the early noughties, but a new operation.
Based in Milan and the US, it's currently showing off these CGI images of a proposed V5 superbike, dubbed the MondialMoto V5S and V5R. The heart is an apparently all-new V5 engine, with a 75.5° vee angle, titanium valves, and a 200bhp+ power output. The design shows a radical aluminium monocoque chassis, with single-sided swingarm, Brembo brakes, carbon wheels, Ohlins suspension, etc etc. The spec list is a bit like something a 14-year-old bike geek would write on their school jotter cover - satnav, fully programmable ECU, LED lights, race mode, keyless remote, electric mirrors, etc etc (etc).
It actually looks like a bargain at just €36k for the R version and €27k for the S. But we'd need to see much much more in terms of 'real metal' before being convinced of the veracity of the claims. The firm claims it will have a bike to show off at the EICMA show in Milan next year (2019), production will start in 2020 and that it has €2.5m in investment.
In the meantime, the computer graphics are quite pretty to look at during this long hot silly season...
More info at the MondialMoto website: http://www.mondialmotousa.comwww.mondialmotousa.com.
