Every Sunday, my colleagues at Iconic Motorbikes go for a morning ride out to the Rock Store. Sometimes I join along – here’s a few highlights from today’s excursion!
OK, this photo’s cheating because it’s actually from Friday. But I came back from the Yamaha MT-10 launch on Friday and walked up to my bike (pro tip: if you’re packing light, take your motorcycle to LAX because the good central parking lots are free) and was surprised to see a custom painted VFR 30 feet away. I walked up to it to discover it was my buddy Steve Rapp’s bike! In addition to his many motorcycling accolades (Willow Springs lap record holder, Daytona 200 winner), he’s a pilot. He also a big fan of the VF1000R, so he had his VFR800 painted up in a similar scheme. What do you think?
I was running a little bit late so instead of starting the morning at the shop I went straight to the first stop, a gas station on the corner of PCH and sunset.
The theme of today’s post is going to be Aprilias – it starts with a ’16 Tuono Factory that my partner Adam just picked up.
There was also a RSV1000R owned by a client with an interesting livery.
But there were plenty of cool bikes from other manufacturers. Here’s a wonderful RC36 owned by my buddy Glenn (he also had the RZV500 in this video that Nathan and I did showing off the exhaust sound).
It’s got a few great mods as he’s planning on turning into a RC30 replica.
Speaking of Hondas – an investor of ours in Iconic from Washington recently purchased a Honda VFR400 from us and he came down to pick it up and join us for the ride. It came to us from a seller in Georgia and it’s one of the nicest NC30s I’ve seen.
My buddy Vic got his Hypermotard 950 SP lowered a couple of inches to make it more manageable and I think it looks better. No report yet on how the handling was affected, but it’s an interesting visual nonetheless.
Cory enjoys his new VFR400 on Mulholland Highway.
Over at the Rock Store, I saw my first Suzuki GSX-S1000GT in the wild. I definitely prefer the “Metallic Reflective Blue” option and would invest in the bags that come with the “+” model, but sport-tourers are very appealing to me and I’d love to try this one.
I had to ask the owner of this Suzuki SV650S if it was a stock color – he confirmed and said it was a 2006 model. He did note that he had painted the wheels, I thought the bike looked great.
A lovely Moto Guzzi V7 Racer – we have a different one currently up for auction.
Back to the Aprilias – there was a new RSV4 Factory and a new Tuono V4 Factory. I’ll take the Tuono.
More interesting to me was a pair of older Apes – a RSV1000R Colin Edwards replica and a Tuono Racing. Again, I’ll take the Tuono.
I split off from the group as I had to meet up with Vy – I took Decker Canyon and enjoyed a moment of solitude. Tomorrow, I’ll get some more miles on the Bimota on Angeles Crest Highway…
