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/128403
39th Tokyo Motor Show Kosaku Yamaguchi. At the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show, Yamaguchi showed a SV650 engine modified to operate using the Miller cycle; this time around, the engine is the 650cc Burgman parallel twin. According to Yamaguchi, a parallel twin is easier to develop since there is only one cylinder head to deal with. Uke Suzuki's amazing Stratosphere, Suzuki gave no indication when or even if the Miller cycle would be commercialized. KAWASAKI Kawasaki has never been about gimmicks, and, like other Tokyo Motor Shows, no concept bikes were presented. For their loyal japanese customers, Kawasaki displayed its new KX450F motocrosser, ER-6n avant-garde entry-model street twin, the Ninja ZX-I OR superbike, and the 200-mph ZZR 1400 "mega-sports" (according to Kawasaki's press release) bike. ALL THE REST Sadly, the European manufacturers kept their world-debut models away from japan after the stunning intros of the Ducati SportCiassics line and the KTM superbike prototype at the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show. Visitors had a chance to see BMW's new HP-2 super enduro bike, Triumph's T 100, Scrambler, and Daytona 675, and most of Harley-Davidson's 2006 lineup (by far the biggest dispiay by a non-japanese factory). And if one looked closely enough, they could find the tiny booth of Taiwan scooter manufacturer Kymco and the new line of "Top Boy" and "Grand Dink" scooters. Visitors who went out of their way to visit the Tokyo Motor Show's historical display were in for a real surprise: a display of a three-wheel prototype vehicle called the Phiaro P67b Eternity. "The P67b Eternity is a next-generation two-seat vehicle on three wheels carrying a 660cc engine," said representative Takeichiro Iwasaki. "The Dynamic Vehicle Control system allows the vehicle to automatically tilt its body at a precise angle according to velocity and steering angle." The P67b is built off the Carver One platform, a vehicle developed by Carver Europe and Brink Dynamics. It is a vehicle that is truly half-motorcycle and half-car. "If you look around on the roads, most vehicles only have one person, or maybe a driver and a passenger," explained Erwin Blomsma, commercial director of Carver Europe. "There's rarely more than two people inside the car. Why then make a vehicle that's more than two persons wide? We thought we should make a vehicle for two people but one behind the other. A narrow vehicle that takes less space, less frontal surface for fuel consumption and so on. But then again, you want people at the same height as normal passenger cars, because you want the occupants to have a good look at the traffic and you want other people to see them. "If you rnake a narrow, high vehicle, then you need to do something about stability," Blomsrna added. "So what we've done is find a natural balance of the vehicle like a motorcycle, to find that same balance in the corner. So what this system will do is mechanically distribute the steering input to the front wheel for turning and the cabin tilting. So at low speed, we divert the steering to the front wheel, and at high-speed to tilt the cabin. It's more difficult to tum the front wheel at high speed. When you see a corner and start turning in, the cabin automatically tilts. You steer it like a car and it banks like a motorcycle. "Our system calculates, based on the mechanical forces, how much it should tilt: At 50 to 60kph (25 to 30 mph) you can tilt this vehicle up to 45 degrees, which is impossible with a motorcycle," Blomsma continued. "Yet this system has excellent stability. When you corner, it's amazing: There's no force on your body and you take a very fluent move. When you take a corner at high speed - and I've done this on a racing circuit - when you then look in your mirror, you see a nornnal car behind you skidding and losing control and hanging on to their seatbelts. We are very relaxed in our seat, with no lateral movement when we corner. We've had car guys come up to us later, wondering what we had, as they could not keep up with us in the corners. We only have 68 horsepower - nothing - yet in the corners nobody can keep up with us. When other cars brake for corners, we bank and turn in. It's amazing." 30 NOVEMBER 9,2005 • CYCLE NEWS "It has always been a technological problem," added Frank Vermeulen, commercial director for Brink Dynamics. "The reason why you don't see them on the market is that nobody really solved the technical issues of the tilting system. You need a consumer-friendly system, not something only an F-16 pilot can ride. That would be of no use. We are absolutely convinced that we are still the only ones that have the right technology. It's the tilting system that makes us unique in the world. We've limited the tilting to 45 degrees because the more you tilt, the [more the] space inside the vehicle gets smaller and smaller. If you develop one for the circuit, you could easily make it tilt 60 degrees." Thus far Carver Europe has built and sold about two dozen Carver One threewheelers over the last five years. A deal with a firm in the United Kingdom was recently inked to provide a manufacturing line capable of producing up to 500 vehicles a year beginning in mid-2006. In November, Carver Europe will meet with representatives from the United States about federal certification and marketing of the Carver One and Phairo P67b Eternity for sale in the United States. The Phairo P67b shown at the Tokyo Motor Show was a prototype. According to Erwin Blomsma, production of the P67b is planned for 2008. Stay tuned. eN