CSC Blog

Well over 100 degrees yesterday, folks, but we’re in an air-conditioned exhibit hall (Building 6) at the Pomona Fairplex, and we’ll be there today, too!

Just a few shots from yesterday, and I’ll be out there with my trusty Nikon again today!

Let’s start with this photo of two young guys getting acquainted with the CSC Cyclone. There were a lot of folks all over these bikes yesterday…

There are tons of off-road and on-road vehicles at the Lucas Expo…I’m going back for more shots today, but here’s a hint of what’s out there…

Tequila on tap…could things possible get any better?!?   Good times, and I’ve actually been to the rancho where they make this stuff in (where else?) Tequila, Mexico!

Hey, check this out…the park rangers from Ocotillo Wells had an interesting exhibit that included my new buddy Scorpio.   I grabbed a shot getting as close as a I could using my flash…

What happened next was really cool…the ranger pulled a black cover over the terrarium and used a black light to illuminate the scorpion.  I grabbed a shot with the Nikon through a peephole.  It’s kind of wobbly because I didn’t use the flash, but this photo (vaguely reminiscent of a scene from Predator) is still pretty neat!

The Lucas Off-Road Expo is a big show (estimated to attract 65,000 people, a number I believe based on the crowds I saw yesterday), and like all big shows, the pretty girls were out in force.   This young lady (Elise) posed for lots of photos directly across the aisle from us…and she was happy to pose for me…

One last photo, from a young fellow reacting to the Cyclone’s killer $3495 price!

Watch for more photos later, boys and girls.   We’re headed back out there today, and I’m going to grab a bunch more!

Ride safe and stay cool…

That’s where we’ll be showing the new CSC Cyclone this weekend folks….at the Lucas Off-Road Expo in the Pomona Fairplex!

Please stop by to visit!

I think I will ride my KLR 650 to work tomorrow just so I can take some photos of it next to the CSC Cyclone.   I’m still jazzed about the side-by-side photos I grabbed of our good buddy Dean’s DL650 next to the Cyclone, and I’m including a couple more here so you can get an idea of the bike’s size…

This is a cool shot, too, because it shows the tail end of both bikes.   Note the much narrower profile of the Cyclone versus the WeeStrom…

The Suzook doesn’t come standard with the luggage you see in the above photo (the Cyclone does), and like I said yesterday, the out-the-door price of the DL650 is something well north of $9K.   Suzuki has a version of the DL650 that comes with panniers (the side cases) but not a top case, and that bike’s MSRP is $10,049!   The Cyclone is $3,495, plus DMV fees, taxes, and a $35 doc fee.

Don’t get me wrong, folks.  I’m not badmouthing the Suzuki.   I’m proud of the fact that I bought a Suzuki L-twin from Steve’s brother when Suzuki first offered a Ducati-like L-twin back in 1997.   That was my TL1000S, and it was a dynamite bike.   I’ve never owned the V-Strom, but it would have been on the list had the Cyclone not come along.   You wouldn’t go wrong with either bike, but your wallet sure would be a lot lighter if you opted for the Suzuki.

That shot to the left is yours truly with the TL000S a few years ago.   If you guessed Mexico, you would be correct.   If I recall correctly, my friend Marty snapped this photo in the volcanic sulfur fields north of San Felipe.   Dramatic scenery and the whole area smells of sulfur.  You can bet I’ll be grabbing similar photos with the Cyclone sometime in the near future.

Anyway, I want to get a photo of the KLR next to the Cyclone, and that’s on the agenda for tomorrow or maybe this weekend.   The KLR goes for something north of $7K now, I believe.   It’s also a good bike, but I don’t believe it’s in the same league as the Cyclone from a fit and finish perspective.

One more thing, and that’s the Lucas Off-Road Expo at the Pomona Fairplex this weekend.  We’ll be in Bldg 6, Booth Number 6109.   Please stop by, and as always…

Stay tuned…

Here’s another photo from the Open House this past weekend, folks, showing a DL650 Suzuki alongside the CSC Cyclone…

The Suzuki?   Well, well north of $9k.   The CSC Cyclone?   $3495.

And, just to stir the pot a bit more…I grabbed this when nobody was looking to give you a very rough idea of our future accessories thinking…

More exciting news:  We’ll be showing the Cyclone motorcycle at the Pomona Fairplex this weekend.   It’s the Lucas Oil Off Road Expo, and we’d love to see you.   Just look for the crowd around the newest and most exciting motorcycles in the world, and that’s where we’ll be!

Keep an eye on us, folks…there’s lots more coming your way!

Wow, what a weekend!    Turnout was brisk, we took pre-orders on a bunch of new Cyclones, and everyone had a great time.

Lupe and the RX-3.    I know what you are thinking.    Yes…they pay me to do this.

The most prevalent comment I heard on both Saturday and Sunday was this:   The photos on the Internet don’t do the new Cyclone justice…the bike looks way better in person than it does in the photos.  As the guy who took most of those photos, I don’t if I should take that as a compliment or not, but I have to agree that the RX-3 is one fine-looking motorcycle.   That’s not just my opinion…it’s what we heard from everyone.   We didn’t have to ask anyone if they wanted to sign up…they all told us.  Wow.

And you know the Internet has been lit up with comments about this great new motorcycle.   An interesting question emerged on the ChinaRiders forum, and that’s what colors are selling the best.   Here’s how that one shakes out based on the pre-orders we’ve been taking…

We call the color of the bike I’m getting orange, and I guess it is, but I think the color is really closer to a dark yellow.   Like I said, it’s the bike I ordered, and I like it a lot.   It’s kind of funny…it’s the one I like and I guess because of that I’ve been posting mostly photos with the orange bike.   The pattern has been this:  Whatever color I feature on the blog, that’s the color we get the most orders for.   When I post a photo of a blue RX-3, we start getting more orders for it.  Our red bike is in certification testing right now, so I don’t have as many photos for it.   And we don’t have a white one yet.   We’ll see how those colors do when we start posting more photos.

Hey, here a few more photos from our great weekend…

Twin Peaks Steve

MotoMapper, aka Agent 007

Happy campers who made the list

The blue Cyclone

I’ve got more photos and I’ll post those in the next few days, folks.  Like always, the best part of these events is meeting and making new friends, and we did a lot of that on Saturday and Sunday.

Good times, with much more to follow.

Stay tuned!

The appetite for CSC Cyclone information is insatiable.   In fact, we were caught off guard today when our CSC website went down for 45 minutes because we exceeded our bandwidth allocation!   That’s never happened before, and it’s a good indication of just how thirsty folks are for info on this exciting new motorcycle.

With that in mind, here’s another of our Cyclone videos.   This one addresses more of the Cyclone’s technical details and features…

I had a real nice night this evening with my girlfriend Susie, and I’m looking forward to the Open House this weekend.   Keep an eye on the blog, as we’ll be posting lots of Open House photos and maybe a video or two.

Better yet, why not take a ride out and visit with us?  We’d love to see you, and folks (trust me on this) you need to see the Cyclone!

No question about it:  Our path to market with the CSC Cyclone is unconventional.  Well, sort of.  It’s the model we evolved into with the CSC-150 and CSC-250 motorcycles and it worked well for our national and international distribution of those motorcycles.   It’s the path to market we’re going to use initially for the Cyclone.

There will come a time when we decide to use dealers, but for the time being, we are not.   The most significant reason for that is we couldn’t sell you the motorcycle at the price we’re offering if dealers were in the mix.  If there’s a dealer between you and CSC, the bike would shoot up to something very far north of $4,500 very fast.

Like I said above, we know we’re following an unconventional sales model with the Cyclone.   We’re doing it to deliver an exceptional bike at an exceptional price.   We started with the Don’t Miss the Boat program.   Our Cyclone path to market could very well be called the Rock the Boat program.   Rocking boats is what we do.   We’re doing it for you.

The obvious question if there’s no dealer network is this:   How do I service my bike?

That’s coming up, folks.   Keep an eye on the blog.

Folks, the response to the RX-3 has been just incredible.   The “Don’t Miss The Boat” program is nearing completion, and while I can’t tell you how many motorcycles we’ve taken reservations on, I can tell you we stopped counting motorcycles and we’re now counting shipping containers (and there are lots of motorcycles in a shipping container).

The bottom line to the above is that we’re holding the “Don’t Miss The Boat” open through the Open House this weekend.   We’ll be here from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and I hope to see you there, too.

One more thing, folks:  The number of inquiries we’ve been receiving on the Cyclone are over the top….from folks who want to get on the $2895 list, from the news media, and from you.   Some of the inquiries are extremely technical questions (e.g., yesterday I had a guy ask me the engine temperature in the mountains when the bike was going uphill).   Quite frankly, we don’t have all the answers to all of the technical questions yet.   By all means, please keep your questions coming.   If we have the answer, we’ll provide it.   If you don’t hear from us immediately, it means we’re either researching the topic or contacting Zongshen for the answer.

We’re doing our best to provide information on this bike as we develop it and as it becomes available.   We just recently posted the approach for taking delivery of the bike.   We’ll have more blog posts in the near future on our decision not to use dealers initially, the maintenance approach, the warranty, and more.   We’re following an unconventional path to market with the Cyclone, and we’re doing that to maximize value to you.  Stay tuned, because there’s lots more information coming.

Along this same line of thought, there are at least a dozen Internet forums with threads on the CSC Cyclone now (most of them popped up in the last two weeks).   In fact, Randy Prade and crew just recently started the www.RX3forums.com site, and it looks like it’s going to be a winner.  We do our best to keep up with the forums and when we can, we’ll answer the questions posted on those forums (but we can’t do that in every instance for every question).   The best place to come for answers is straight to the source, and that’s here.   Shoot your questions to us, and we’ll provide answers as best we can.

We’ve been explaining to the folks on our “Don’t Miss The Boat” list the options for taking delivery of their new CSC Cyclone.   We’ve also been getting questions on the Internet forums about this, so we thought we’d spell it out here on the blog.

Here’s the deal:

If you’re in California, you’ll have to pay the DMV fees, sales tax, and a $35 documentation fee.   You can pick the bike up here in the shipping crate, or we’ll ship it to you.   If we ship it to you, we’ll charge you the shipping costs (they’ll be based on the actual shipping costs).

If you’re out of state, you can either pick up the bike here or we’ll ship it to you.   Out-of-state folks won’t have to pay the California DMV fees or sales tax, but we will charge you the $35 documentation fee.   If we ship the bike to you, we’ll charge for shipping based on your location.

If you want us to do the setup for you, we’ll charge a flat $200 setup fee.   Or, you can take the bike in the crate (in which case there’s no setup fee, but you’ll have to do the setup).   The setup includes:

• Installing the front wheel
• Installing the mirrors
• Installing the windshield
• Charging the battery
• Installing the luggage
• Installing the guards
• Checking the fluids

That’s it, folks.   We can’t quote a general shipping fee because it will vary based on your location.   As always, if you have any questions, just give us a call.

We’ve had a ton of hits and comments on the Cyclone video I posted the other day, and in addition to the comments about my shiny noggin and expanding belt line, there were several requests for a video that would let folks hear the engine.

Here you go!

We’ll be posting more videos over the next few days and weeks, so keep an eye on us!