Another EICMA program is underway in Italy, so that means no sleep for the bad guys and Agent Bothanas they scour the nooks and crannies of Milan for information on next year’s bikes – ahead of the official release.
It looks like the Bimota will be the focus of the show, as the Italian boutique brand is making a foray into the off-road world, first with a limited-edition Kawasaki series enduro.
Dubbed the Bimota BX450, this enduro model is a compelling offering. The power plant comes from the 2023 Kawasaki KX450X off-road mountain bike, and we can see that most of the chassis also comes from the green machine.
That makes sense considering Kawasaki’s big investment in Bimotaand the obvious ability to tailor an already sturdy package. Bimota took the trail bike and added headlights, taillights and a larger fuel tank to the product.
Looking beyond the surface, we understand that Bimota has also added a powerful electronics package to the green machine, offering adjustable traction control settings and selectable throttle mapping. choose.
Another change is the 140/80, 18″ rear tire, and it is paired with a 21″ 80/100 front tire – both with Metzeler 6 Days Extreme rubber.
For more details, we’ll have to wait for the official launch of the Bimota at the 2022 EICMA Show, but if our report of an ADV model could be true, it’s going to be an interesting day to prove it. Bimota brand ants began to appear.
Source: Bothan Spies – More images and analysis are available below for ours Reader A&R Pro.
Analysis of A&R Pro:
While it is exciting to see Bimota enter the off-road with the offering of the Bimota BX450, understanding the debut of this motorcycle takes some time. Maybe I’m still working on it, but here’s the problem:
A fair assessment of the Bimota BX540 is that it is very similar to Kawasaki with a three-layer body, but in the same breath, one has to admit that the BX450 is also a refurbished Kawasaki that doesn’t really exist.
In the European market, Kawasaki has KLX450R motorcycles, while the United States manufactures KX450X offered as a “transnational” model.
As the chimera of the two, the Bimota BX450 offers an enduro product that can really excite both markets and should present itself fairly well against the competition.
With that being said, I see the real game here as Kawasaki/Bimota taking KTM’s place in the enduro/dual-sport space, at the high end of the spectrum.
Orange branding dominates this space, and no matter how hard it tries, Kawasaki won’t make a significant mark on KTM sales within its current branding parameters.
However, there is some validity that the Bimota brand could make a splash in the premium dirt bike arena, and this seems to be the Italian company’s volley into that space.
However, that concept has to come with some caveats, with the first being that the Bimota BX450 is not intended to be a high-volume machine. At the time of this writing, we don’t know how many units Bimota plans to make, but when a boutique brand like Bimota says something is a “limited series,” I tend to think of numbers. 10, not 100.
Time will tell on this, but I don’t see the BX450 as a big blip on the radar… at least not yet (we’ll have to see how committed Bimota is to this space and how much talent it has. resources are poured into the brand’s off-road pursuits).
No one can doubt that Bimota has a high mountain to climb if they really want to hit the sales numbers that KTM and associates are capable of producing in the premium mountain bike arena (heck, in overall topographic market). The biggest hurdle here is distribution, or current shortages.
KTM is able to make the numbers it is today thanks to its extensive dealer network that has become expert at selling dirt bikes to two-wheelers enthusiasts. The Bimota, on the other hand, has almost no delivery, and is even less prestigious in the off-road space.
There’s a lot of heavy lifting that has to be done here to make a bike like the Bimota BX450 a success, not to mention all the heavy lifting that still needs to be done for the Bimota in a more general sense.
Now, if you told me that Kawasaki dealers would start selling the BX450 and the rest of the Bimota line… that would be an interesting announcement to hear at EICMA.
