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1999 MZ Sport Cup and Black Panther |
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Posted by Peter Jones
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Saturday, 18 September 1999 |
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Page 1 of 5
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MuZ Scorpion Sport Cup & Black Panther
One Heart, Two Souls
Story Peter Jones ~ photos by Blake Conner
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| MuZ? I bet many of you are wondering who the hell are these guys and are they serious. They're German and yes. There's no better proof of MuZ's seriousness than the fact that they've bought their own World 500 Grand Prix team - something that a few companies with a stronger foothold in the world market are unwilling to do. I guess the same philosophy might apply here as that used by racer Rad Greaves who once told me, "If you're trying to learn how to fly you might as well do it with eagles rather than sparrows." |
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The MuZ company has but two lines of bikes, each of which shares the same power plant yet possesses two completely different personalities. The two lines are the Skorpion Sportbikes (of which there are five different models) and the dual-purpose styled bikes which include the Mastif, the Baghira, and the new for 2000, Black Panther. We specifically tested the Skorpion Sport Cup and the Black Panther. The best thing about both of these bikes is that they're different sorts of dual purpose machines: you can ride them on the street or you can race them in one of the Skorpion Cup series around the country. For my money nothing tops spec-class racing.
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The Engine
The power plant that MuZ uses in these two bikes is a Yamaha 660cc, single cylinder, four-stroke, overhead cam, four valve. The two pipes and two carbs will confuse the car guys into thinking that the bike is a twin. Personally I'd keep the ruse going and swear to God that it's a twin. It will make them feel better thinking that their $80,000 sports car was outperformed by a twin rather than a single. |
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The clutch is cable-actuated and the trany is a five speed, although I at first was thinking it would be six. Shifting up until a bike has no more gears and then going back in the other direction is fine until one knocks the bike down five gears without releasing the clutch between shifts and second turns out to be first. "Oh… it's a five speed." I prefer to have the bike tell me about itself rather than read the specs beforehand.
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| The engine has a fairly narrow power curve for what one might expect from a single but, then again, it is a small single. Optimizing the engine's abilities necessitates full-throttle and much shifting. If you're a motorcyclist who likes to just sort of ride along, you will not notice this. It takes the flog-everything-to-its-limit attitude for a rider to care or notice the width of the power curve. Anyway, the fun thing about little bikes like these MuZs is that you can find that limit long before you're going 130 mph over the legal speed limit. Because of the dangers of serious horsepower flogging, big bikes require respect, but flogging little ones simply requires disrespect. You tell me which is more fun. |
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