: Vyrus: Delicious moto goodness

By: g | No Comments » |

How to welcome in 2010 around here? Especially since it’s a month late!

As usual, I have been swamped with more things to do than I know what to do with so this week I had an easier one, after getting that bit older, and also remembered that Mag100 has been sitting here, feeling quite rightly neglected.

The first post for 2010 is about two wheels, though not of the human powered variety. For the majority that don’t know, of late I have been spending a bit too much time in front of CAD, doing up designs for the new Mountain Cycle bikes, the’ San Andreas ’20” and the ‘Zen II’. No easy feat considering the heritage attached, especially to the San Andreas, a bike that 20 odd years ago changed the thought process of designing mountain bikes and still today has influence.

It’s been a long time since those days when I was at Ducati (Cagiva Group SpA) as a staff designer, for what amounted to a shorter than expected time. The mid 90′s was not one could call a stable time for the marquee, and being paid in envelopes full of cash and having to make trips over to Switzerland every few months to re-stamp the passport, was not a way to feel secure, despite the best of intentions! Since then I have done all sorts of design work but have dabbled in mtb’s and frames on the side on and off. In the late 90′s I even designed and had made a FS design that actually worked pretty damn well, but finding the right materials and skills to turn it into production here in Sydney turned out to be near impossible. Regardless, I have always kept up with what’s going in in both the bike and moto worlds.

Heading head long into designing new platforms for Mountain Cycle has dredged up all those hours spent in the past dealing with all this sort of ‘stuff’, so working on it was just like dusting off the cobwebs and having a quick fresher course. Luckily we have some very cool engineers on board as well…. god send! And that’s where I stop telling you about what we’re doing.

But it brings me to the actual point of this post.

I am one of those people to whom design is important but in saying that, it has to be intelligent design. I think I am past the point of silly rubbish that looks good but ultimately is shit; maybe I was never there? Nope, that’s not true, I’ve done some of that type of design…. shhh! Regardless I’m finding that with the MC work, like with Lab-Gear – I’d like to design something outlandish and faddy but have found, by some internal need, that I have to design something clean and efficient. Cool, but with no loose bits, nothing that I will look at in a year and think WTF was I thinking?

So, when I saw the Vyrus it just struck a nerve. It is by all accounts a revamped Bimota Tesi and then later a RADD (aka James Parker’s R.A.D.D out of the US) but regardless it is pure design function, which is what made me fall in love with the Tesi the first time around back in the very late 80′s. Every part of this thing makes sense but more than that, it is true design in that it does not take something that ‘everyone does because it’s easy’, ie. a standard chassis design, but re-thinks how and why a moto should go together. In doing that, it creates an aesthetic that is, at least to me, to die for yet also be engineering brilliance.

So finding Vyrus on the interwebby was a super way to kick of 2010 here at Mag100 and was something I thought worth sharing.

The vid is worth the watch.

[more here: vyrus.it]

 

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