OK, I'll come in to defend Carbon/Kevlar - as the last three bikes I've owned, superduke, LC4 supermoto and Ducati 900 Superlight, ended up having the panels gradually changed over whenever the originals got damaged or CF parts turned up on ebay.
So the first thing I would say is that I hardly ever ever pay the full price and just wait to pick things up when they appear, (which they do a lot)
I just love the finish, especially in the sunshine when you can see right through the gel into the weave, it's a fantastic material. As a product designer I spend most of my time considering materials for their appropriates, their strength, their ability to be machined or formed, their performance etc. as well as their aesthetics and appeal. Have none of you seen a piece of F1 car component made from carbon and engineered to perfection? They're works of art.
When I was a teenager we all had to make our own seat units and fairing mods because there were few companies making race style bodywork for street bikes at that time in the UK and those that were were way out of our price range. So when you've spent years making home made moulds and laying up heavy fibreglass shells and hand finishing and painting them it's something of a revelation that by the 90's there's this amazing new material and technology that allows a strong form to be made that is incredibly light weight, doesn't need painting to look superb, is starkly honest. (by that I mean that unlike a custom tank that had 20 layers of metallic candy coat and 20 layers of laquer - this may look amazing but it is a bit of a pretentious tart really).
One thing I like about KTM's is their stripped down, ruthless purposefulness. There is little unnecessary stuff and weight and even so we are all stripping off the SAS valves, the excessive rear number plate carrier, the heavy exhausts - everything we can. But the KTM bodywork is a genetic descendent from their dirt bike heritage. They make everything from injection moulded PE and it's designed to be dropped and crashed and bend and not break - which it does mostly very well. But it's really heavy, over engineered and a bit crude. The style is great, KTM have mastered and lead the "edge" styling technique but their manufacturing process results in components that are like big, heavy Tonka toys from the 70's.
But the Superduke isn't an off road bike - and it's not really designed to be crashed all the time. So why not replace these bendy, heavy, ungainly parts with a material which is more reflective of the philosophy of the engineers who built the frame and the engine and the suspension? This is my opinion anyway.
I'm not doing it to save weight. I agree that I would not notice the difference, I would be better off loosing 3 inches off my waistline!
And although I work in branding I always take off all removable badges, stickers, logos from anything I buy - what's this obsession with riding around on a bike that looks more like an advertising billboard? I don't run a race team so why cover my bike with stuff I'm not getting paid to do?
Maybe that's a better question to ask this forum.
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