Sideburn's 48hrs in Milan Pt.1

Yes, about one month too late, but anyway, as mentioned Dave Skooter Farm and I went out to Milan for two days after being invited by our friends at Officine Mermaid. We left my house at 2am to get to Stansted for a 6am flight, then a terrible bus ride straight to EICMA. This is the biggest motorcycle show in the world. There is nothing else like it. It's incredible, a bit overwhelming. I didn't even see half of it, but here are some of the things that caught my eye.

BIKES 

The Z1000 40th anniversary concept, made from a current Zed (above). The tank's wide, to get over the frame, the pipes are overly fussy, the exhaust headers look like they were designed on an Etch-A-Sketch, and the headlight is too fat tyre chopper, but I still think it's a great idea. 

Mr Martini Bonneville on the Zard exhaust stand.

W&W always have a great stand, dominated by a yellow school bus made into a bar and meeting room. They also have old Harleys that have done epic journeys (proper epic, not instagram epic). The yellow one did the hard bit of the PanAmerican Highway (the part everyone else flies over). The grey one rode over the frozen sea from Alaska to Canada in the -847 fahrenheit (approx).

Naked 999 in brown and grey. Different.

Interesting Bandit with very fancy front forks (anyone recognise them?). 

125cc hardtail.

Stunning enduro-spec BMW with novel, if absolutely daft, toolbox mount. Seems such a crazy solution to a problem, but I still love it.

T-shirt brand, Holy Freedom had a few interesting bikes on their stand, a bare-metal small-frame Vespa, this bobbly (christened by Dave S.F. - it's a bobber with knobblies), and, below, this Honda street scrambler that was a bit of a change to the Harleys that were on every other 'lifestyle' stand.

CR&S Duu - S&S motored über-roadster, this one for a customer in Britten tribute colours. I'm not mad about it, but it's interesting. I admire the effort. I much prefer...

The CR&S Vun, the Rotax engined single. This is another fancy customer version with an alternative sub-frame and rear light.

PEOPLE

The first person we bumped into was Gio the photographer wearing two Sideburn patches. Put a smile on our faces.

Matt was nearly at the end of his six months in Europe. We had a Peroni or two.

We had a good chat with legendary US racer Don Emde. He won the Daytona 200! That's him below.

The Italians go for dolly birds all over their stands. These pin-ups stood out from the lycra-clad misses.

PRODUCTS AND PARTS

Shark's new Raw helmet.

 Conrad Leach's art.

Marchisini's nippleless wheels. 

 

Pirelli's tattooed tyre exhibition.

More later in the week...