You folks know I love my sidecars, so I was highly intrigued when Ural announced that they were putting a hold on production of their traditional Gear-Up model and coming out with a new rig. There’s lots to cover about it (and I’ll do so in my upcoming written review) but I’m sharing this post now because I have one of the new models in my garage at the moment so if there’s anything you want to know about it, this is the time to ask! Plus, if you’re local and want to come check it out…drop me a line!
I know that sidecars aren’t for everyone and I’m not trying to force my religion on you but I adore them. It would never be my only “bike” but I appreciate the different experience and Vy loves them, too. In fact, this whole thing started because Vy will be dogsitting a friend’s pug that she absolutely adores later in the month and I thought it’d be fun to do a story with her and the dog. Meet Waffles:
Ural said I could pick it up a couple of weeks early as RevZilla just finished up a story with it which I think will be a future Common Tread XP episode so it’s not my place to share what they did, but I will say that the bike had clearly been off-roaded before I got it. I was glad to see that, because my favorite Ural experience also involved the dirt: years ago my buddy Spurgeon at RevZilla joined me for a 2-up trip on a Ural Gear-Up Sahara for LA-Barstow-to-Vegas, and I couldn’t believe that Ural agreed to give us a bike for the trip:
They’re a plucky company that’s doing whatever they can to survive – I’ll discuss that more in my review. But for now, the basics are that they partnered with a company called Yingang in China to take one of their models (the SUV 500 II), then worked with them to beef it up a bit. There’s still plenty of unknowns but Ural’s plan is to hit the market with these soon and with a price tag just under $15,000. Also, it will only be 1WD.
You can check out Ural’s page about this bike if you’re looking for some info, but let me know what questions you have and I’ll try my best to answer them. Thanks!