Saturday, 16 July 2011

Mule Streetmaster

Chucking money at bikes doesn't guarantee Bigger Better Faster. You need some science too. And every piece of Mule's new age Bonneville (what's left of the Hinckley original) has been under an electron microscope. There's not an atom out of place. Yours for a snip at $75,000. Read the full story in Sideburn 8. Photography by David Folch. BP
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5 comments:

  1. Dan Born17 July 2011 at 04:16

    it hasnt taken long for the cafe racer and street tracker platform to become the new "chopper 2005" has it? I respect what Mule does and respect his opinion on other websites, but 75 grand is a bit steep.

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  2. mule17 July 2011 at 05:01

    This was a "One-off build" that has many components made of the expensive Ti stuff. The brake rotors are ceramic coated Ti and cost about $1K each. The shocks wre custom and very pricey as was designing a one-off seat, making a mold and then doing a seat in carbon fiber. Every single part is hand made. Tubeless spoke wheels with Ti spokes, Ti exhaust, axles all hardware,we build a frame fixture and designed a new frame as well as milling a custom billet, hydraulic clutch primary cover. Then we had a lightweight primary cover cast up. All this stuff adds up in huge chuncks to a big parts bill, not to mention an ungodly amount of hours to design and figure out and make stuff that never existed for this application before. Or....you could just buy a stock Bonnie with 200 extra pounds and 25 less HP for so much less money! Look at all you'll save.

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  3. jimmy monk17 July 2011 at 13:45

    Or you could buy a house,
    or three XR750s.

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  4. Dan Born18 July 2011 at 00:19

    so thats basically 2600.00 dollars per single measurment of horsepower based on a price of 10 grand for a stock bonnie. I know the old adage of "speed costs money...how much do you want to spend" but thats a lot. Obviously, you are not paying for speed, but also some performance through "custom" one of parts, which hopefully work better than the stock ones, otherwise, their existance if futile, as well as the labor put into them unfortunatly. In then end you pay a lot for "the look" which i can never stomach. Kind of like paying all thos extra thousands for riding a v-twin with a harley badge.
    No doubt a lot of time, talent and design when into this bike, and i dont want to knock that.
    I guess its just the midwestern midnset balking at price. But, it someone else is willing to pay for it, then your price is perfect.

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  5. David Folch31 August 2011 at 02:02

    to Dan and jimmy, please read the article. 75 grand was the cost of the prototype like Mule explained it here. The cost of the "production" (?) bikes will be much more affordable.
    cheers

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