Twist The Throttle - New Air Dates!
Exciting news — The first episode of “Twist The Throttle”, which is on Honda, has a new premiere date!
Discovery HD Theater, which is Channel 76 on your DirecTV system, has scheduled the first episode of the eight part series to premiere on Monday, April 6 at 10pm, immediately following American Chopper.
The second episode features Ducati and it premieres on April 13th at 10pm.
More info shortly…
Update: Detailed episode listings are now available on the Discovery HD Theater website here.
Info Below…
Apr 06, 10:00 pm
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Honda
Today, Honda is both a worldwide brand and instantly recognizable name. But in the beginning, Honda is nothing more than Soichiro Honda’s last name.
Apr 07, 1:00 am
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Honda
Today, Honda is both a worldwide brand and instantly recognizable name. But in the beginning, Honda is nothing more than Soichiro Honda’s last name.
Apr 07, 5:00 am
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Honda
Today, Honda is both a worldwide brand and instantly recognizable name. But in the beginning, Honda is nothing more than Soichiro Honda’s last name.
Apr 12, 5:00 am
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Honda
Today, Honda is both a worldwide brand and instantly recognizable name. But in the beginning, Honda is nothing more than Soichiro Honda’s last name.
Apr 12, 4:00 pm
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Honda
Today, Honda is both a worldwide brand and instantly recognizable name. But in the beginning, Honda is nothing more than Soichiro Honda’s last name.
Apr 13, 10:00 pm
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Ducati
TV-PG
Motorcycles weren’t what the Ducati brothers had in mind when they first created a radio manufacturing company in 1926. See how the Ducati’s revolutionary designs have inspired modern pop culture.
Apr 14, 1:00 am
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Ducati
TV-PG
Motorcycles weren’t what the Ducati brothers had in mind when they first created a radio manufacturing company in 1926. See how the Ducati’s revolutionary designs have inspired modern pop culture.
Apr 14, 5:00 am
(60 minutes)
Remind Me
Twist the Throttle
Ducati
TV-PG
Motorcycles weren’t what the Ducati brothers had in mind when they first created a radio manufacturing company in 1926. See how the Ducati’s revolutionary designs have inspired modern pop culture.
Update:
HD THEATER TAKES TO THE ROAD WITH TWIST THE THROTTLE, AN EIGHT-PART SERIES EXPLORING SOME OF THE GREATEST MOTORCYCLE BRANDS IN THE WORLD
Original Turbo.com Broadband Series Makes Its Television Debut with New Footage on HD Theater Starting Monday, April 6
(Silver Spring, MD) – Millions of people ride motorcycles and millions more fantasize about what it would be like to ride these cultural icons of speed, freedom, craftsmanship and personal rebellion. HD Theater’s new series, TWIST THE THROTTLE, takes audiences on a remarkable 36,000 mile journey across the globe to explore eight of the most famous sport motorcycling brands. Each episode focuses on a single brand, showcasing the remarkable history; the behind-closed-door factory, design facilities and R&D departments; and ultimately, what it is like to ride these magnificent machines on some of the most picturesque roads and spectacular racetracks in the world. The brands covered in TWIST THE THROTTLE include Bimota, BMW, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, MV Agusta, Suzuki and Yamaha. TWIST THE THROTTLE premieres on HD Theater starting Monday, April 6 at 10 PM ET/PT. Additionally, TWIST THE THROTTLE is narrated by actor Ed Quinn (Eureka, CSI:NY), who is an avid sport bike rider.
Using spectacular 1080i high-definition and 5.1 digital surround sound, TWIST THE THROTTLE takes viewers directly to challenging racetracks like Kawasaki’s Autopolis on the island of Kyushu and Honda’s top-secret proving grounds in California’s Mojave Desert. For the first time ever, outside cameras were permitted on Yamaha’s private test track, Fukoroi, in Hamamatsu where TWIST THE THROTTLE put two of Yamaha’s newest sports bikes to the test. In addition to exclusive access to these private test facilities, the series travels on the open road through picturesque locales like northern Italy’s Futa Pass. Originally an ancient Roman road linking Florence to Bologna, the Futa Pass has over 200 curves carved into the mountainside in just a 20 mile stretch.
In addition, TWIST THE THROTTLE journeys through the history of each brand through interviews with the people behind their unique design philosophies. The series features an exclusive interview with
Massimo Tamburini, considered to be the “Michelangelo of Italian motorcycle design,” who created some of the most iconic motorcycles including the Ducati 916 and the MV Agusta F4. Normally a recluse, Tamburini unlocks the doors of his design studio to reveal how he creates “mechanical art” and why he believes machines have souls. Additional interviews feature some of
the most important names in the motorcycle world telling each brand’s remarkable story including:
• Honda’s Masanori Aoki, BMW’s David Robb and Yamaha’s Atsushi Ishiyama
• Former racing World Champions Freddie Spencer, Wayne Rainey, and Kevin Schwantz
• Current American road racing stars Mat Mladin, Neil Hodgson, Miguel Duhamel, Ben Bostrom, Jamie
Hacking and Reg Pridmore
• Legendary motorcycle journalists Nick Ienatsch, Mark Hoyer, Mitch Boehm, Clement Salvadori and
Mark Tuttle
About HD Theater
The first 24-hour high-definition network to broadcast all of its content in brilliant 1080i and 5.1 digital
surround sound, HD Theater offers compelling real-world and motorized content from a wide range of
categories including adventure, technology, nature and world culture – all designed to provide viewers
with the highest-quality television experience available. .
About Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications (Nasdaq: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) is the world’s number one nonfiction
media company reaching more than 1.5 billion cumulative subscribers in 170 countries. Discovery
empowers people to explore their world and satisfy their curiosity through 100-plus worldwide networks,
led by Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Planet Green, Investigation Discovery
and HD Theater, as well as leading consumer and educational products and services, and a diversified
portfolio of digital media services including HowStuffWorks.com. For more information, please visit
www.discoverycommunications.com.
Favorite Book of The Year - Hodgson’s Back on Track
With the year quickly coming to a close there’s a certain amount of self-reflection hanging in the air. That quasi-introspective light that reveals both the magnificent and the less then stellar, the things you admire and the thing you’d like to alter when next season comes.
Clearly this hasn’t been the best year for my personal riding because I just haven’t had enough time to actually do it and I’ve spent far more hours away from the bikes than near them. On one level that eats away - rather constantly - at my sense of ‘what’s right in the world’, however the desire to be ‘near’ bikes has shown itself in a variety of different forms. Some of which are relatively obvious - like the hours spent working on moto-docs, while others were surprisingly unexpected.
In particular the vast amount of moto-reading that I found myself consuming over the course of the past year. Some of these escapes where brand specific while others era specific, and a few were merely tangentially moto-related, yet of all the books I flew through this year none was nearly as illuminating as Back on Track
Generally speaking I’m always somewhat hesitant to pick up a biography written with or by the subject themselves, as often times these sorts of books are crafted in the glowing light of perfection and rarely shed insight into the person themselves. Instead these sort of ‘tell all’ experiences feels less like the truth and more like you’re reading what is essentially one very hefty Nike commercial that’s sole purpose is to help stir the subjects celebrity status. However Back on Track is remarkably different than other puff-piece Bios — Because it isn’t one.
The book was not written during a Championship season, nor does it paint a perfect picture of Neil or pretend that he is in fact a perfect person. Instead Back on Track offers the most candid look that I’ve ever read on what it takes to run among the big boys in WSBK. From the highs to the lows to the constant search for that little bit of extra speed in every corner, Hodgson and co-writer Neil Bramwell lay it all out there for the audience to relive and learn from.
Perusing the pages you get the sense that the actual act of racing is almost the easiest part of being a professional World Superbike rider. Rather it’s the constant movement and motion from one place to another and the assortment of issues that go along with living a vagabond existence that seems to be the most trying part of professional racing.
In addition to the absolute sense of honesty that the book portrays, Back On Track is surprisingly open about what works and what doesn’t when you’re racing. Considering that at the World Superbike level of racing it is truly everyman for themselves and an arena where success is often predicated on secrecy, it truly astonishing that Neil is as open about what goes on in the pits and how that ultimately affects his outcomes during a race. He and his team spend the year constantly plagued with parts that don’t work, bikes that blow up, a lack of factory support and a somewhat elusive search for better results. The way that they go about sorting these issues out is really the core of the book and the journey from the first race of the season to the last offers a surprising amount of knowledge that applicable not only on the track but in the everyday real world when you’re not even around a bike…
We’ve Got Air Dates!!!
Twist The Throttle
A somewhat crazy week ended with a bang — well, not a bang exactly, but we did get some great news…Twist The Throttle now has official air dates!
NETWORK:
DISCOVERY
HD
THEATER
AIR
DATES
&
TIMES
(NOTE:
ALL
TIMES
ARE
’LOCAL
TIMES’ )
MONDAY,
JANUARY
5TH
10PM
- HONDA
MONDAY,
JANUARY
12TH
10PM
- DUCATI
MONDAY,
JANUARY
19TH
10PM
- BMW
MONDAY,
JANUARY
26TH
10PM
- KAWASAKI
MONDAY,
FEBRUARY
2ND
10PM -
SUZUKI
MONDAY,
FEBRUARY
9TH
10PM
- MV
AGUSTA
MONDAY,
FEBRUARY
16TH
10PM
- BIMOTA & ALPINESTARS
MONDAY,
FEBRUARY
23RD
10PM
-
YAMAHA
Quick Update on the Twist The Throttle front — Discovery HD Theater has decided to push the premiere of the series back until later in the 1st Quarter of 2009 in order to give it more promotion on both TV and in the Mags.
Unfortunately we don’t have the new air dates just yet but I’ll post them as soon as the new schedule is announced.
Them AMA Boys Got Skills
On Monday I once again found myself standing at the edge of a pit wall watching the best of the best in this country lay down sizzling lap times during an AMA testing session at Laguna Seca. As long time TwistingAsphalt readers might remember a few years ago, when we were working on Speed On Two Wheels, I was fortunate enough to spend some time at Road Atlanta during a completely-closed-to-the-public testing session and I found it a more or less mind-blowing experience. This time around was both better and yet a completely different entity.
For starters the event was actually open to the public - I think much to the teams dismay actually - and that created an ‘in the know’ atmosphere. Back at Road Atlanta everyone’s guard was down because it was just the teams doing their thing and the event had a bit of a ‘club house’ feel. Monday everyone seemed a touch more guarded, a touch more reserved and generally more intense, which is both understandable in my opinion and yet I think also highlights a need to ‘perform’. The Pro’s not only want to be fast but they want the fans to enjoy it and that added a certain extra element to the day.
We were there to do some additional pick up shooting for the yet to be named project 
and the folks at the track were kind enough to let us set up in our own garage at the end of Pit Row, which selfishly allowed me the chance to see guys like Mladin, Duhamel, Hodgson, Bostrom and Hacking do what they do up close. It’s a remarkable thing to stand mere feet away from these guys (behind the pit wall of course) when they hit the front straight and head into the Turn 1 left kink full out. The speed is ferocious. And wickedly instantaneous. Just bam. Yet the part that truly stood out was seeing these guys interact when they were off the bikes — the typical race day TV coverage never completely catches their focus, dedication, effort or intensity. You tune in and see forty-five minutes of racing and then it’s over. But a test session is different because it’s an all day affair where the guys put down hundreds of laps, tweaking each part of the bike a millimeter at a time to see what works best. Physically I’ve got no idea how they do it. This isn’t like an average track day or even some of the club races I’ve seen, it’s a constant whirlwind of movement and it’s all got to be done at green flag racing speeds, which amazes me. They seem to work at a level of perfection that is completely unobtainable in the ‘real world’.
Fast Freddie Is Fast…
Admittedly I’m fairly brain dead at the moment, so chances are this post will be anything but in English, however we just got back to LA after spending the last few days “kicking tires and telling lies” with the Freddie Spencer School folks at Miller Motorsports Park in Utah. It was a remarkable deal - for starters Miller is just an amazing track - this was my first time there and I was completely struck by how clean, modern, and brilliantly laid out it is. Yet what made it truly special was the reason we were there, to spending time interviewing former Grand Prix World Champion Freddie Spencer, the only man to win both the 250cc and 500cc Championships in the same year, and one of my personal favs, long time Cycle World scribe Nick Ienatsch. If I were more awake, this is the point where I’d go on and on about what great individuals both men are - however in my current mental state that’s a touch hard to do… 12 hours drives will do that to you However since leaving the track I’ve been struck by two overarching thoughts… First, while sportbikes are unequivocally cool machines - and there’s little need to argue about that - more often then not it’s the folks behind the bikes, the brands and the faceshields that truly stand out. Both Freddie and Nick are no exception and to be able to pick both of their brains is an out of this world experience. The knowledge they’re able to share and the insight they offer is utterly amazing and the stories they tell make you wish you could have lived their lives…. Secondly, to be able watch them work with students and ‘teach’ is awesome. Even though I wasn’t riding I felt like I learned a ton. But more to the point, I’d always wondered if the premium price tag associated with the Freddie Spencer School was worth it, yet after seeing the attention to detail, the level of one-on-one instruction (which took place at an altogether different level they any other riding school I’ve ever seen) and the improvements being made by the riders who were there, I can’t help but want to pony up the cash to do it the right way and go back to ride with them myself. What they do and how they do it is a completely different animal then anything I’ve ever seen in person…
“The Honda Myth: The Genius and His Wake” - Go Read It!
A few weekends back I was kicking tires and telling lies inside the paddock during the AMA races at Fontana when the topic of Honda Motor Corp’s rapid historical ascent to the top spot in worldwide manufacturing came up in conversation. Even though I’ve clearly been hooked by the uniquely articulated passion of the Italian motorcycle industry, I’m not naive enough to ignore the tremendous historical contributions and implications that the Japanese motorcycle industry, and the Honda Motor Corp. in specific, has offered to motorcycling in general. In relatively short order, a mere twenty to thirty years post World War II, Honda went from a bit player in Japan to a dominant force worldwide. That’s an amazing amount of growth and a tremendous story to say the least.
My fascination with the brand’s history undoubtedly hit a high point during the Twist The Throttle shoot, when we visited one of the Honda factories in Japan and spent time with some of their folks inside their Tokyo headquarters. The way their “associates” (what Honda call its employees) spoke about the brand seemed remarkably different then the rest of the companies we visited. They were equally as passionate, but in a much more concrete way - almost as if the presence of Soichiro Honda still existed.
The tangible nature of the old man’s impact is one of the key differences that separates Honda from the other brands, partially I suspect because unlike the founders of Suzuki or Kawasaki for example, both of which started in the late eighteen-hundreds and in completely different business, Soichiro is still part of the company’s relatively ‘modern’ history. In the grand scheme of things, he really hasn’t been gone all that long. Therefore the fact that his drive and ambition still strongly echo probably should be all that surprising to the general motorcycle fan.
As I recounted my respect for what I’d seen and for what Soichiro accomplished, one of the folks I highly respect in the moto-landscape suggested that if I really was curious about how Honda got its start, then I ought to pick up a copy of “The Honda Myth: The Genius and His Wake” by Masaaki Sato (a former writer for the Nikkei paper in Japan, which is effectively their equivalent of the Wall Street Journal)… More After the jump… (more…)
Twist The Throttle Launches!
It’s been a very exciting morning thus far — Late last night we found out that the online portion of our motorcycle documentary series, “Twist The Throttle“, launched on the Discovery Turbo website!
‘Twist The Throttle’ is an inside and behind-the-scenes look at eight of the major and/or most storied motorcycle manufacturers in the world, including; Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, BMW, Ducati, MV Agusta and Bimota.
(more…)
