Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127784
·RIDING IMPRESSION 1996 MZ Skorpion Replica - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - (Left) The Skorpio n Replica Is both nimb le and stable. Power Is supplied by a IIqul dcoo led, Yamahabuilt. fi ve-v alve single. (Below) The bodywork was des igned by ., the British firm Seymour Powell. g he guy waiting at the light next to me was driving a black Mustang LX. His car was lowered , the wheels wide and chro med. All the glass except for the wi ndshie ld was imp enetrable, tinte d da rk as night. By the sound of the exhaust an d the subdued whine of an under -h ood b lower, it was easy to tell this guy had only one thin g on his min d : acceleration. As I sa t n ext to h im, I th ought to m yself that this gu y is America's version o f p erfo rmance . Floor it and go - th e burnout is king. I th rew him so me revs. "Man, thi s thing sounds like a dirt bike. I wonder if he' s intimi dated." His dark windows and m y e qu a ll y d a rk face-s hilild m ad e it impossible to tell if he had even noticed the smallish silver spo rtbike and the single-cy linder chu ff emitted from its twin, upswep t stainless-stee l Sebrin g exha usts. I revved the big -bor e sing le again . This time, there was a response. As I listened to the edgy, relatively unmuffled staccato rip of the Mustang's dual exhausts and watched the car rock back and forth from the torque, I thoug ht to m yself, "This might be a mistake." But I was committed . The light we nt green. I had five grand on the tach and dumped the clutch. The MZ lu rched forward and I struggled to keep the front end down. There wasn' t a chirp from the sticky 160/60 ZR17 Metzeler MEZ1 rear tire. The Must an g, in d ramatic contrast, seemed to be sitting still on the line, mired in wheelspin as huge bill owy clou d s of w h ite smo ke pou red out from under the fender wells. "I might have a chanc e yet," I thou gh t. My hope g lim mere d for on ly a moment - the cold rub ber of his spinning tires h ad found so me heat, were n ow past the paint lines at the contro l light for the freeway on-ram p and clawing vigor- After the straight-line defeat, it struck me that pow er-mad accelerati on junkies might miss th e poi nt of the Skorp iori and I knew that drag racing was not the Repl ica's forte. Sure, it' ll still take most cars in head-to-h ead speed contests, but judging from the spec sheet, the nearest wi nding road w as d efinitely th e right di rec tion to travel in the search for the MZ Skorpion Replica's sing le purpose: turning. . . . While th e Ge rman -mad e Rep lica shar es the unique round-tube tw in-spar frame and engine with its less rare siblings the Skorpi on Spo rt, Tour and Traveller, moving beyond these components is where you begin to see wh y the narrow bike works so well through the turns - and why th ey h ave to char ge $10,500 for the privilege of owning one of the 24 copies of the Replica coming to the United States in 1996. Yes, the thing that really sets the bike apart, is part s. Do names like Bremb o, Marchesin i and WP mean anything to you? It ' s an enthusiast' s dream come tru e - all the best, and those Marchesini wh eels come shod with highqu ality Metzeler MEZ1 rubber, too. The Skorpion takes its name from the Tigcraft-b u ilt , Sey mou r Powell-st yled single campaigned in the British Sound of Singles wi th good success to this day. ously at the asphalt. His car was accelerating. I had gained the initial advantage, bu t first gear hadn't seeme d to last very long - the motor qu ickly bounced off the rev limiter an d almost sent me over the low clip-on bars. I fou nd second gear, but w as fr ustrate d b y th e w i d e ju m p in ratios. I w atched th e white-faced tach more closely and timed the shift to third better. The gap between gears wasn 't as frus tratingly wi de this time and momentum began to build. At 660cc the Skorpion w as abou t one -eigh th the d isplacement of this spri nting Mu stang, but the MZ was holding its own. My dark nemesis pulled even, th en slowly cre pt away. The battle of brute force ended at ar ound 65 m ph and had been lost by a hair. Blower Boy prevailed, an d I set out to find the nearest winding road to release some of the frustr ation . In fact, racer Mike Edwards recently won the second round of the European Supermono Cup on the 1996 wo rks Skorpi on at Doningt on Park in April. . The stree t-going ve rs io n is a fairly fa ithful rep roduction on th e su rf ace, thou gh if you dig a little deeper there are di fferences. Where the prototype Tigcraft bike had a Rotax sing le to pr opel it from turn to tum, the stree t version (and now the racer, too) uses Yamah a's five-valveper-cylinder, 660cc single that sees duty in the European Yamaha XTZ660 dual purpose bike and the curvaceous SZR660 sportbike. Also, the prototype frame was bon ded to its sw ingarm pivot w ith special aircraft adhesive, while the production bike gets welded togeth er. Though the en gine is identical throughout the Skorpion line, the Replica has three m ore h or sepower than th e other models us ing the Yamaha-sourced powerplant due t o the dual exh aust setup. Competition parts such as a 2mm- By Mark Hoyer. Photos by Kit Palmer and Hoyer