EICMA 2008: First Impressions

I have had a little walk around checking out the preparations for the show. I haven’t seen anything that I haven’t already seen or heard about previously, but here’s a selection from three of the halls. Yamaha are the only manufacturer to use an industrial crane to place some of its bikes up on high rise stands. There’s a naked XJ and a new scooter. Suzuki have covered up some Bandit 650’s so I’ll check tomorrow whether Suzuki have made updates to it. The B-king in white looks fantastic. Aprilia have covered up most of their new bikes, but the theme is V4 and ABS. Moto Guzzi will have only one new bike from the looks of it and that’s the V7 Cafe racer plus new colors available on the Stelvio. Bimota also had all their bikes covered up, but one of the news is the DB7 with a full carbon fiber frame. I also passed some funky looking scooters from Nipponia. MV Agusta probably has the coolest stand that resembles the famous trellis frame.

On the new bike side there’s only 1078RR’s that we’ve already seen. I did see some F4 specials again, but I’m not sure yet whether they are new for 09 or not. In 20 minutes I’m heading in to the Ducati press conference where the Streetfighter 1098 and 1198 will be showed in the flesh for the first time. I have not passed BMW, Benelli, Honda or KTM yet so that’ll have to wait til tomorrow.

By Tor Sagen