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/128148
rysdale V-8 Bruiser BY ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE AND PHIL SMITH t's taken the best part of three years to finally get built, but the latest of 43-year-old Australian bike visionary Ian Drysdale's multi-cylinder motorcycles, using his established DOHC, 32-valve, 90-degree Veight powerplant, which is now fuel injected, is at last cruising the streets of suburban Melbourne, looking for trouble at traffic lights and fisticuffs on freeways For instead of the 750-V-8 Superbike which preceded it, Drysdale's new maxi-bike is the two-wheeled equivalent of a nightclub bouncer, the Bruiser mega-Monster - a Naked roadster prototype set to form the basis of the most exclusive, most muscular and potentially most performance-packed customer cruiser for sale anywhere in the world. Indeed, the Bruiser is a bike for which the 36 APRIL 3, 2002' .. U .. • _ term RUB (Rich Urban Bikers) might have been invented. The new Drysdale V-eight is the ultimate street-legal ultrabike for RUBs, since anyone capable of writing a check for upward of $35,000 can now join the three-deep waiting list to buy a handmade solution to that 17 -year question: How do you out-max a Yamaha V-Max? One look at the latest model in the Drysdale V-eight lineup answers that question - and though the day I spent riding it in 750cc prototype form gave only a partial clue as to how dominant it'll be in the traffic-light GPs once Drysdale completes the 1000cc guise in which all Bruisers will be sold (delivery of the first of the trio of bikes Drysdale has already sold in America, to the New England lawyer who is the debut Bruiser customer, will happen later this spring). The dynamic part of the performance equation looks set to be resolved, n __ s too. You won't get Ian Drysdale to admit it, but one reason the prototype Bruiser was wearing a chunky, partworn wet-weather Michelin race tire for me to hustle it through the bush and into town for a touch of tucker and a nice cuppa tea could well be that its rear-tire consumption had outstripped the stock of Dunlop D208 supplies held in the Drysdale Motorcycle Co.'s Dandenong factory. An exponent par excellence of Australia's can-do doctrine, Drysdale had a single-minded objective in mind when he started work on his V· eight streetbike project back in January 1994: "I wanted to build a roadlegal racer - the highest performance motorcycle that could be ridden to the milkbar for a loaf of bread," says the Melbourne-based design engineer, whose CV before building the Bruiser includes a wide range of esoteric projects, in a myriad of specialist fields. Like converting the mechanical swan used in the AustraUan Ballet's production of 'Swan Lake' to radio control; or supervising the fabrication and installation of rolling road dynos for the GM/Holden and Ford car companies; or the wind tunnel at Melbourne's Monash University; or developing a lightweight movie tracking system and camera crane for the flourishing Australian movie industry to use on location; or converting ATV quads for use by disabled farmers; and so on. As a motorcycle junkie from way back, apart from competing with varying degrees of success in almost every branch of two-wheeled sport from desert racing to motocross, flat track to road racing, Drysdale has also built a variety of innovative machinery - some conventional, others avantgarde, a few frankly weird. Apart from the rear-wheel-steer bicycle he built at school as an entry in a science competition, which sadly