Well, you either loved it, or you hated it (and, unfortunately, most of our readers were in the later group), but there was definately no shortage of opinion on the Non-Object nUCLEUS we showed you in our article dated November 13, 2008. Let’s just hope the designers have thick skins — you didn’t hold anything back in your emails. Here, in their unedited form, are your thoughts on the Non-Object nUCLEUS:
- OK, it’s a box…
- Looks like a coffin on wheels. A coffin might be what you need after the first turn when the square edge of the bodywork sticks into the ground like a tent stake and blasts the rider off into space. Style wise, I call it apathy in metal. No emotion at all, which completely misses the point of motorcycling.
- I have got to say the nUCLEUS is the worst design i have ever seen. There is nothing exiting or inspiring about it. the complete lack of customization options besides some lame “skins” will turn off many enthusiasts and many new riders won’t want to be seen on such an ugly thing. The design just screams “I didn’t care enough to finish building a real bike”. It honestly looks like someone made a block in Solidworks 2009 and puts some wheels on it. I wonder what else he could have spent his hour on instead of designing this….. thing. Two thumbs down!!
- Who, in their right mind, would waste time/resources on such a
thing? It’s beyond idiocy! And, I’d love to see the designers ride the
thing in a strong crosswind.
- You’ve got to be kidding me with this thing!
- While it doesn’t appear to me to fit what I’m looking for it has more visual appeal than that BMW “thing” that was shown recently. Nice to see someone thinking outside of the, uh inside the box. It would be interesting to see some numbers on the aerodynamics.
- It’s F-ugly. It’s boring. It’s an art school project for art snobs.
- Motorcycles may indeed look similar, in the same way that people all look similar. However, there are many reasons motorcycles don’t look like the nUCLEUS, and ironically, fashion is not necessarily at the top of the list.
- Well, they finally got around to building the Rollerball bike…
- I just checked with Sears, and even they have never seen a TOOL as big as this guy. The crate my HyperMotard came in is more compelling than this thing. He should stick to salad shooters, the conspicuous consumption crowd that shop at Sharper Image are always up for a new kitchen gadget.
- Pathetic. When it “rises off its haunches” like a camel, does it spit green slime in your eye, too? Although that would be better than having to look at the thing. An abomination that makes the most egregious pandermobile from the celebrity bike bildah heroes look good. A friggen’ refrigerator on its side. Death in a crosswind. Designer boi Lukic should stick to salad spinners – they’re easier to draw on his Etch-A-Sketch.
- Looks like my refridgerator… Actually, my refridgerator looks much sportier than that. If motorcycles start looking like that I will stop riding them.
- Tell Branko to stick to designing golf clubs.
- Motorcycles are emotional objects. They stir our artistic souls and that is why to we love the look of a classic Norton engine, but also appreciate the body work flow of a modern GSX-R. So, is this a IBM blade server on wheels, or will it serve well as a bartender droid on Jabba’s Sail Barge. Either way, it’s not a motorcycle.
- U G L Y !!! Looks like an overgrown USB Flash Drive.
- With our Predictive Mandelbrot-Heisenberg Flexinanomotronic Distillator, we have removed all air currents from the planet thus making the nUCLEUS impervious to side winds. A portable PM-HFD device, soon to be developed, will achieve similar results for roads that allow SUVs, trucks, and Fleetwood Broughams.
- OK, so it’s an academic design exercise that happens to be a motorcycle; but, I judge he missed the point of motorcycles. Good designers know that the form of an object should not interfere with its function. The function of a motorcycle is to achieve quickness by sacrificing power and grip in favor of light weight. This design project does nothing to improve quickness, saves no weight, and does not recover power or grip. Therefore, it fails as a motorcycle then fails as an academic design exercise. All of his pretentiousness could not raise Branko above C- in any proper undergrad art or design class.
- Whenever I see something that makes me say “no way,” I’m often seeing something that eventually grows on me. So take that into consideration when I say “no way.” From first impressions, it looks heavy. I realize the designer probably has some way to make it lightweight, but it LOOKS heavy. And from the front view the lean angle doesn’t look very well thought out. If the body panels are made of magnesium, though, it could put on quite a show. It looks like design for design purposes while overlooking purpose. I’ll take three.
- Very different but the pegs and bars should also retract.
- Steven Takayama and Branko Lukic are obviously suffering from “engineers, not motorcyclists” syndrome.
Not only is that the most stupid and butt-ugly motorcycle I’ve ever seen, but can you imagine riding that in even a SLIGHT crosswind? You’ll get blown across 4 lanes of traffic before you can blink.
- This is an interesting concept. However, I think the motorcycles will eventually fall back on themselves to the original concept. The first motorcycles were bicycles with motors wedged in them. With today’s high strength frames I could easily see a light weight urban commuter being the next big thing. All electric, light weight and back to the basics of motorcycles. Get from A to B while saving money and having a heck of a big smile on your face. The dinosaur SUV’s of the 90’s have fallen. Soon the same effect will appear in the motorcycle world.
- They should definitely stick to salad-spinners!
- What the hell? Is this non event the only thing you could find to write about today? Some guy who has “put his stamp” on golf clubs has wrapped an aluminum box around a perfectly good motorcycle because he is frustrated by conformity? It challenges our assumptions? Why do we need a box shaped motorcycle, you ask? I ask, why do we need this bs on MD? Save it for April Fool’s Day!
- First reaction: Is it April 1st? So let me get this straight, these two guys set out to….. think outside the box…….and end up with a box….Gotcha. In an era where customs are influenced by bobbers, choppers, baggers, scramblers, basically everything but the kitchen sink, these guys do a 180 and give us a kitchen sink…how unique. There is no doubt these two have a future in design but its at Whirlpool not H-D…
Second reaction: This probably IS the future of motorcycling. Someday batteries will make more sense than combustion engines….and who wants to look at batteries? Too some like me, the motorcycle is a couple of triangles and circles that frame and showcase an engine. The engine is the focal point. Motorcycles are art. In future motorcycles, material ‘skins’ may provide that art, just as kids do with iPod covers now. When I look at the nUCLEUS I see a Honda Pacific Coast crossed with the Mammoth Car from the Speed Racer cartoon series……commissioned by Whirlpool of course.
- The nUCLEUS is a perfect illustration of why Japanese artists-stylists should be reined in for their own good. Take the B-King as example number two.
- Purely stupid, a 2 mile per hour crosswind would blow you off the road, and it’s not aerodynamic head on at all. Genius has it’s limits stupid has no bounds.
- Oh yeah…I’d love to be on THAT the moment I passed through a 25 mph crosswind. I can’t imagine what buffeting or gusts would feel like on that. Even if it wasn’t a flippin’ sail from the side, those panels are so low to the ground that we’d have less cornering clearance than all but the worst cruisers. Those two traits would REALLY go over well. You said, “…every
motorcycle you can buy will do what you need a motorcycle to do with equal competence…” except for this potential contraption, which wouldn’t turn well, wouldn’t support passengers, wouldn’t support accessory storage and wouldn’t deal with simple hazards like wind from the side.
- Well, it’s nothing if not pretty…
- Ha ha. What, did you get an early start on April 1st ?
- I can’t believe anyone would waste time creating a digital image of something so aesthetically awful and overwhelmingly unattractive.
- Yes, the nUCLEUS is still imaginary, like the potential customers who will magically appear from a cloud of fairy dust. The typical customer would probably be that adventurous, artistic soul who dreams of a warm Sunday ride slowly cruising buck-assed naked past the town’s largest church just as the service ends. I love art too, but, Dude!
- OMG that thing is ugly. Why would I want to sit on a box and ride away on it? No appeal whatsoever. I do agree the motorcycle market has not moved to new concepts, and same old thing is getting boring. Too slow to make new vehicles. The 3 wheel concepts are neat, so that is a positive change though. Independent rear suspension sport quads are so slow to develop it is silly. Polaris had one for a few years, now Honda. Maybe 5 more years and the rest will. It takes a decade to come out with something that isn’t that new and not that complex? Thats sad.
- My daughter, a designer herself, wondered if they also design urinals…
- ridiculous.
- Uh, no thanks! Interesting possibilities there for a mobile billboard, but as a motorcycle it would need to turn, and unless it can hike up its skirt further than the video indicates to provide better lean angle and ground clearance, turning will be an issue.
- nUKE IT.
- Good gravy!, was my first thought on seeing the picture of this “thing” on your web page. However the more I read (both on your website and on nonobject’s) the more synapses began to awaken. Their description of the current motorcycle design is somewhat accurate, aesthetically and dynamically, and their first draft is very thought provoking. Their seems to be many aspects of this motorcycle that deserve discussion; transforming feature as a function of storage, longitudinal and lateral aerodynamics, ergonomics, etc. I for one like the direction.
