COVER STORY
Penny Pasta
Author: K3 Chris Onwiler
Italian exotica on a Raman Noodle budget
 An excerpt from K3’s first-ever track test, circa 2003:
“Vivid fall foliage streaks by in a red-orange blur. Sunshine pours like liquid honey from a painfully blue sky. Crisp, cold air knifes through the perforations in my leather suit as I hurl through this perfect Michigan autumn afternoon, swept forward on the crest of an immense wave of torque. An orchestra of glorious, penetrating, purely Basso Profundo sound swells and ebbs, artfully conducted by my right wrist. Bellowing into my helmet at the top of my lungs, I’m lustily murdering the lyrics to every snatch of Italian Opera that I can remember.” When it comes to Italian motorcycles, you fall into one of three camps; you own one, you want to own one or you’re lying. Motocicli d'Italia are the stuff of dreams; magnificently engineered, painstakingly crafted and achingly beautiful. They are also rare, exclusive and bloody expensive, which is why most of us only fantasize about possessing (or perhaps more accurately, being possessed by) one.  TrackdayMag.com sponsor CrankyApe.com is an auction site that sells bank repossessed and insurance total loss vehicles. With locations throughout the country, they offer RVs, watercraft, ATVs, trailers, snowmobiles, cars, trucks and most importantly, motorcycles. Since insurance totals sell for so much less than ready to ride machines, the site is an excellent place to troll for a new track toy. At CrankyApe.com, you can find a basically intact cycle that’s had the pretty whipped out of it and buy the thing for peanuts, leaving some cash in your pocket to modify the machine for its racetrack mission.
Each year, we do a CrankyApe.com project bike. In 2008, we scored the Salvage Sweetheart, a 2006 GSXR 600, for $2500. This bike is still serving yeoman’s duty as Senior Editor K3’s primary track ride. In 2009, we picked up the Red, White and Buell, a 2007 Buell Firebolt, for $4500. This machine was raced by Editor Rob Oliva, scoring its first of many wins right out of the box and never missing the podium any time it was entered. As much fun as those projects have been, the motorcycles that we chose for them were fairly common machines. It was time to do something radically different for 2010.
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