These are shots sent to me by the MV Agusta press office. They're of the new MV Agusta Brutale R 1090.
Now I bet that it's an awesome (to quote our US cousins) motorcycle to ride with 144bhp on tap, and I'm sure if I had one parked outside the house, I'd be mighty proud.
But looking at it, it leaves me completely cold MV says it has 'unique design.
It looks a mess. It reminds me of a Honda Hornet. Is this wrong?
9 comments:
Not wrong and not awesome, just about everything looks too big.
i agree, you could mistake this for being something from the japanese manufacturers. nothing too exciting about the looks...
Seems kind of random, and kind of ugly, to me. The center is vague. I do NOT think they have a winner there, I think they have a disaster. The latest Benellis and Ducatis look a lot better, as do the older MV's, in my opinion. Not awesome. Back to the drawing board for MV....
Most, if not all bikes manufactured these days just have no 'soul'. This is no exception.
I have to agree with all of the above comments and I'm pleased I'm not the only one who finds the MV lacking in 'je ne sais quois'....
I agree with everyone on the general principle of missing soul in this kind of styling. However after seeing a couple of earlier Brutales in the flesh in race track car parks,(a black one with a very dark purple suede seat at Assen and a classic silver and red early model at Silverstone) I have to say that as the school of modern shapes goes, they're not half bad. The irony is the Brutale kind of started the whole "melted plastic" headlight thing that every japanese bike uses now. And I have to say it looks a hell of a lot more like a motorbike than the Ducati Streetfighter which looks like it should munching it's way through a leaf somewhere. Still I would rather have a hot-rodded Ducati Sport Classic then either of them so that says it all I guess...
"Busy", as in lots of things going on, is a popular trend in the design of all kinds of things today. It creates an impression of "complexity" that the younger generation associates with quality. However, the older idea, that it is the designer's job to edit complex content to project a "unified" image that conveys the essential qualities of an object, and conceals the rest (complexity made subserviant to form), still has validity with many. Apple has exploited this approach to great advantage.
PJ makes excellent points. The problem with Apple is that in some cases the simplicity and elegance of the all-important appearance and style trumps the "necessary complexity" that accompanies a rich feature set. I.E., the gadgets are sometimes so dumbed down that they are not capable of doing what some users want or need them to do -- the inability to create and name e-mail folders on an iPAD being just one of countless examples. Don't get me wrong -- the iPAD is a gorgeous and superlative piece of technology, the absolute state of the art. But it's a girlie machine, ha-ha, as our California Governator would say over here.
One way the APPEARANCE of simplicity is given to machines that must of necessity be of a certain complexity is that the DENSITY of the functions are compressed into a single activating visible button. So an iPOD (not pad) has a "wheel" which does twenty different things -- but it's only ONE WHEEL -- so it's simple right? Well, yeah, simple for the main tasks. But how many users know every function the wheel can perform? A traditional automobile, from the 1970s say, is a great example of how a plethora of buttons does not automatically equate to complexity. Sure, there are two dozen controls, but every one of those controls is different, ergonomically designed, sensibly labeled and laid out, and NO FUNCTIONS ARE HIDDEN. So any idiot can "master" a dashboard from a Fiat 124 Spyder, say. Now, try that with a Digital Control Panel on a Prius (or programming your VCR or Tivo, for that matter).
Admittedly, it's a big subject...
The devil's in the details. In the flesh, this looks nicer than your next UJM, but if you have to look that close to see it, something's wrong. It certainly lacks a loot of je ne sais quoi to cut it. But I reckon it's all in the ride.
Post a Comment