Motorcycles
5 Great Vintage-Style Motorcycles
Some modern motorcycle manufacturers — some of the best, in fact — have designed and built bikes that harken back to timeless style.
Octane
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MotorcyclesBehind the Wheel: Ducati Panigale 1199 R
Limited in production but not in power, the Ducati Panigale 1199 R ($31,000) is a cross between a Navy Seal and Usain Bolt. It’s got carbon fiber and titanium for bones, a computer for a brain and a 195-horsepower engine revving to 12,000 rpm for a heart.
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MotoringHot Laps: Becoming a Nascar Driver in 72 Hours
The best way to appreciate NASCAR is not by cracking a Bud and plopping on the couch but by getting in the driver’s seat.
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MotoringStudy Up: 5 Places to Learn How to Use 4 Wheels
Becoming a skilled driver is about more than going fast and having the will to beat everyone else. Understanding physics, driving the line well and having hours under your belt in both your vehicle and the track or road on which you’ll drive all play key roles in maximizing your abilities.
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MotoringSmall Wheels, Big Thrills: 10 Best Automotive Toys
Kids love cars and trucks and things that go — get ’em hooked early and they’ll be motorheads for life. Whether you want to start small with miniature die-cast models, build patience with tedious model-building or see how well your offspring hoon, there’s a car toy out there that’ll fit the bill.
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MotoringGuide to Life: Jump Start a Car
Winter is prime dead battery territory, and jump-starting during cold weather requires nearly twice as many cranking amps as its t-shirts-and-shorts counterpart. There’s also another, more worrisome issue to deal with: regardless of weather, most people go about their jump-starts incorrectly.
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MotoringBehind the Wheel: John Deere Gator RSX 850i
John Deere’s first-ever use of a 839cc V-twin motorcycle engine in a Recreational Utility Vehicle (RUV), a beast that delivers the kind of fun typically reserved for all-out-war paintball melees, says a lot about their intentions. With a top speed of 53 mph (feels more like 100), 4WD, fully independent multi-link suspension, nine inches of wheel travel, 10 inches of ground clearance, Fox racing shocks, and a 400-pound capacity cargo box, the Gator RSX 850i seems eager to go anywhere and do anything.
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Motorcycles5 Great Leather Motorcycle Jackets, 5 Great Rides
Rule one of motorcycling is to armor yourself from head to toe with the right gear; style comes second, but when done right, it plays its part in your staying in one piece as well. For that extra bit of protection and tasteful flair, we’ve gathered five great leather moto jackets for the upcoming riding season and paired each with a like-minded beauty of a bike.
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MotorcyclesThe Best Japanese Bikes of 2014 Add Passion to Reliability
2014 promises to offer up a ton of great bikes by which to dispel your winter blues, a handful of those out of the Far East. Japanese motorcycles are well built, reliable and typically more affordable than their counterparts from Italy and America, and they also have a strong history of great performance.
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MotoringBehind the Wheel: 2014 Audi RS 7
We hopped a flight to the deserts of Las Vegas, where early one morning we had our pick of 10 shiny new 2014 Audi RS 7s ($104,900). Over its short tenure, Audi’s A7 Sportback has garnered endless praise and multiple awards, and the sportier S7 has impressed wholeheartedly with its ramped up athleticism and rakish looks.
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MotoringBehind the Wheel: Sportsmobile 4WD
When Charles Borskey started Sportsmobile in 1961, he had no idea the brand would rise to the popular status it holds today as the ultimate vehicle for adventure camping — or for simply making drivers look badass. Specializing in converting full-size vans into custom recreational vehicles, Sportsmobile turns your base people hauler into a rugged, rock-luvin’ beast.
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MotorcyclesOctane Icon: Harley-Davidson Sportster
Until now, the vehicles featured in our Octane Icon series have been but singular iterations of automotive excellence — standout models, limited runs and one-offs that have bucked trends, pumped blood and turned heads. The first motorcycle to be honored in this series defines most of that very criteria.
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Motoring20 Cars We Want To Drive in 2014
Just about every morning, before our cup of joe, we slap ourselves as a reminder of how lucky we are to drive some of the best cars in the world and get paid for it. 2013 was another year of stupendous privileges, with wheel time in Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Land Rovers, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Porsches, Jaguars, Mercedes-Benzes, Audis, BMWs, Aston Martins and more.
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MotoringBehind the Wheel: 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Edition
With one of the highest thrill-to-dollar ratios of any production car on the planet, the only way to make the Nissan GT-R more monstrous (hello, 0-60 in less than three seconds) is a limited Track Edition.
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MotoringThe 2014 Buick Lacrosse: American Luxury, Redefined
Slick, quick and as luxurious as the day is long, the 2014 Buick Lacrosse ($34,060) redefines what an American flagship can be. On roads rife with cookie-cutter shapes and duplicated automotive designs, the Lacrosse displays an edgy and elegant presence that cuts a fresh path through the field of American luxury cars.
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MotoringThe 127-Year-Old Startup: Visiting Mercedes-Benz’s New Silicon Valley R&D Facility
Mercedes has been innovating in Silicon Valley for over two decades, but they’ve decided to bolster their cutting-edge technological efforts with their new Mercedes Benz Research & Development North America (MBRDNA) headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.
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MotoringIcon: Tucker Sno-Cat
Your closest encounter with the winter beast known as the Tucker Sno-Cat was probably watching as scientists and explorers with frozen beards made their way through parts unknown in an episode of National Geographic. What you probably don’t know is that these cold-capable snow monsters materialized out of one man’s desire to find a better method of snow travel, or that they comprise a proud family of multi-purpose vehicles that got their start way back in 1942.
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Motoring11 Essential Items for Winter Driving Survival
Getting stranded on the side of the road in a blizzard is a nightmare.
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MotoringBlizzard Beasts: 10 Best Vehicles for Winter
You’re an hour late to the Christmas get-together, but not because that red velvet blazer you love so much is nowhere to be found. No, instead you’re trapped in a snowdrift in your vintage AMC Gremlin.
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MotoringQuick Spin: Zamboni 522 Electric Ice Resurfacer
When Frank J. Zamboni opened one of the largest ice skating rinks in the country just outside Los Angeles in 1940, he realized he needed to streamline the ice resurfacing process.