Ron’s Wrap

Last fall I had the adventure of a lifetime. Royal Enfield invited me to ride the Moto Himalaya Mustang, which took me from Kathmandu in Nepal to the border of China, high in the Himalayan mountains. The full story appeared in the March…
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You don’t have to be a card-carrying member of the Tom Vialle fan club to drool over his bike. It’s based on the standard edition of the KTM 250SX-F, which is the bike that won the 2025 Dirt Bike 250 Motocross Shootout. And, it’s…
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We have photos; lots and lots of photos. Dirt Bike Magazine has been around longer than any other media in our industry, and our plush, well-lit office is packed with motorcycle history. The problem is that it's all in sleeves, books,…
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This week I got to ride a TM motorcycle for the first time since 2022. That’s when the previous importer Ralf Schmitt left the U.S and went back to Europe.  He left parts distribution in the hands of Dave Turner at Get Dirty Dirt Bikes in…
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Last weekend had the best riding of the year. Pete Murray, Gary Jones and I crammed ourselves into Pete’s pick up and made the drive to Caliente, Nevada for the 41st Motion Pro Nevada 200 Trail Ride. The only tragedy of this is that of the…
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How much has changed in 30 years of Supercross? Everything. And almost nothing. In 1995, the era of the Big Rig had just arrived. Factory teams were beginning to mark off huge areas of real estate in each stadium, and the accessibility of…
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This week I got together with Kit Palmer of Cycle News to cover Beta’s two new dual-sport models: the Alp 4.0 and Alp X. There aren’t many demo units to go around, so Cycle News had one version and Dirt Bike got the other. We got together…
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Beta has added a new bike to the line-up for 2025. The 450RC falls into the “closed-course cross-country” category, which includes bikes like the KTM 450XC-F, the Honda CRF450RX, the Yamaha YZ450FX and the Kawasaki KX450X. Each manufacturer…
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These are good times for the click-bait industry. It’s been a little rough for everyone else. In case you haven’t taken the bait, here’s what you missed: It’s the end of the world. KTM’s world, anyway, is imploding if you are to believe the…
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Last week we took delivery of a beautiful new bike. It’s the 2025 Husqvarna FE501s Heritage Edition. This is at the very top of the dual-sport food chain. It’s fully legal in all 50 states and, at its core, it isn't that far removed from…
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Last week we picked up a 2025 GasGas EX350F. This is now the flagship off-road race bike for GasGas. The model line has been trimmed down somewhat and the EX450F is no longer offered. That’s probably okay with most riders; the 350 was…
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For the last two weeks, we’ve been having fun. The dirt is wet in Southern California and it’s been around 70 degrees. Best of all, we have the 2025 Beta 300RR X-Pro two stroke. The “X-Pro” name is new for 2025 because Beta wanted to make…
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Almost all the manufacturers have discovered special editions. We already have the Honda CRF450RWE and the Kawasaki KX450SR in our clutches and the Austrian bikes are scheduled to arrive shortly. Each one of them has a slightly different…
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The Dakar Rally is difficult on two different levels. It’s insanely hard to finish and even harder to start. To get there , you have to jump through one hoop after another, from learning the discipline of rally navigation to procuring an…
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This week we were visited by a ghost from the past. Honda delivered an XR650L dual-sport bike. It’s actually no ghost at all--it’s a 2025 model, but it very much seems like an apparition from another time. We asked for the test bike because…
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Last week I got together with around 1000 close friends to say goodbye to Malcolm Smith. His family put together a wonderful tribute at Malcolm Smith Motorsports, the motorcycle shop that Malcolm founded in Riverside California. In an…
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This week Honda presented us with the 2025 450RX and 250RX off-road bikes. These are the cross-country versions of the motocross bikes that were introduced last fall to overwhelming approval. They got all the same updates. The most…
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Earlier this month, the Stark Varg EX broke surface. It’s the first motorcycle of its kind: a true electric hard-core dual-sport bike. This is the electrically powered equivalent of a KTM 500EXC or a  Beta 500RS. It will arrive in the U.S.…
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The 2025 Dirt Bike 250 MX shootout is done. We had to take our time with this one. First of all, it was eight bikes deep, which is hard enough. Making it harder yet was the fact that four of them had significant changes (the GasGas, Honda,…
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For such a small company, Beta is being pretty aggressive lately. The company’s off-road bikes have undergone some pretty substantial changes for 2025--to the point that they figured they should have a new name. The standard RR models are…
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