Press

For British motorcycle travellers Lindsay and Craig Foreman, that optimism has collided head-on with one of the harshest realities of overland travel: geopolitics doesn’t care how good your intentions are, how polite you are at borders, or how carefully you packed your puncture kit.

When news broke that CCM Motorcycles had entered administration, it landed with a heavy thud across the British motorcycling world. Not because CCM was a volume giant or a global powerhouse

The Harley-Davidson XLCR is often lazily filed under failures. Low sales. Dealer confusion. Poor timing. Case closed. Except it isn’t. That verdict may be technically accurate, but it misses the point entirely. The XLCR didn’t fail because it was bad. It failed because it arrived too early, spoke the wrong language, and dared to ask Harley-Davidson customers a question they weren’t ready to answer.

Electric motorcycles have spent the last decade hovering between promise and compromise. Range anxiety, charging times, battery longevity, and eye-watering prices have all conspired to keep many riders firmly wedded to petrol. But every now and then, a machine comes along that doesn’t just tweak the formula—it redraws the blueprint entirely.

From the grit and uncertainty of 1976 to the self-awareness of 2016, motorcycling hasn’t followed a straight line. It’s zig-zagged. It’s contradicted itself. It’s loudly declared one thing, then quietly gone and done another.