Friday bike

In the motorcycling world, it's the start of the 'show season' where manufactures reveal their new models for next year. The first of the big shows is Intermot in Germany.
Surprisingly, MZ showed a new model, a 125 with a innovative inlet system. Very few details are known, but it appears that the bike has a 'fly by wire' throttle where the twistgrip position is detected electronically, and fed to an engine management system. The intake doesn't have a throttle as such, instead the inlet valve lift varies to adjust the engine speed. Claimed advantage is more efficient fuel use leading to better fuel economy and lower emissions.

Interesting styling, but the saddle looks really high! The bike says '125 SM' on the side, but some reports refer to it as the 'SF'. More information when I hear any more.

This type of valve operation isn't unique, as BMW have been using a system called 'Valvetronic' on some of their cars. I assume the MZ system is similar, and here's a video explaining the BMW setup.

An electrically driven 'camshaft' varies the pivot point of the rocker, changing the amount of valve lift. This would be driven by a management system which would calculate the optimum lift for a a particular set of conditions - throttle postion, revs, engine loads, etc.

Whilst I was looking through report of the Intermot show, I came across numerous photos of other bikes on show. It looks like the 'retro' look is in this year, and one of the best was the Honda CB1100.

It's been available in Japan and Australia for a while, but will be now on the European market. I think this is one of the neatest looking bikes I've seen for a while, and it just seems to have the 'right' proportions.
Plenty of 'retro' scooters as well, and Simson took it all the way with their 'eShwalbe'.

An electric scooter in their old DDR era Schwalbe scooter bodywork.