It is sad imo that there's very little to fill the gap between the venerable and portly DRZ and pukka enduro machines. I guess that it's just too easy for manufacturers to take a competition bike, cork it up to the point where it barely runs in order to get it through emissions / noise, put a plate on it and stick it in the showroom window - complete with close ratio gearbox, a fuel tank that's half a gallon short, a sump that holds a spoonful of oil, a headlight that is worse than useless, a seat that's too high for many mere mortals and a general air of "money pit". Supermotos suffer a lot of the same problems, so perhaps it's no coincidence that no-one seems to be buying them either. Race bikes are for racing - tooling around on one for "pleasure" takes a lot of dedication. Ever ride a GSXR-SP homologation bike on a public road? it gets old pretty quickly!
Cheap plated secondhand thumpers are ten a penny over here - you can't give one away, because unless you have access to a closed area where you can let one rip they just don't make that much sense. Our local dirt bike workshop is full of grenaded ones too... A lot of the older guys here (and most of us are "older") are still riding DRs, CRMs and other twenty-odd year old tackle because they're maybe not tall, or particularly fit, or because they prefer to "finesse" their way up a tricky climb, rather than go balls-out and risk eating tree! We also share public access with dog walkers, hikers, horse riders and 4x4 drivers, so race pace is out of the question. A bit of tarmac is also unavoidable on a ride out and being relegated to 50mph in order to keep your conrod where it belongs is a drag.
Many of the enduro bike's shortcomings can be fixed with hard parts (or a Beta-style build-your-own scheme), but imo a practical bike really needs a motor and ancilliaries designed from the ground up for that purpose, but the problem is whether anyone is actually willing to pay for one. Purists will probably balk at the idea of extra weight in the form of a bulkier motor, but any extra weight will be low and central and designing a mechanically quiet engine and airbox from the outset will make the bike easier to silence without corking it up completely. Pragmatically speaking any extra weight could be mitigated by losing an inch of suspension travel and lowering the seat - we're not building a race bike, after all. I don't think that existing enduro style chassis are otherwise impractical, but the option of a headlight that doesn't suck shouldn't be too much to ask in the 21st century (it gets dark pretty early here in winter). Perhaps I could live without linkage suspension, but I get the feeling that leaving the linkage off won't make a bike any cheaper. It's a few less Chinese bearings for the factory to forget to fill with grease though, so maybe it's a good idea to get rid of 'em. Get the right spring and PDS isn't too bad and if the tech became commonplace it would only improve.
Did someone mention drum brakes? Egad, no! Too much unsprung mass and rotational inertia, plus there's that millisecond of waiting for the lock up every time they're applied. I don't imagine that they would save any money either, or attract a lot of customers. Widowmakers.
Anyway, that's enough ranting and wishful thinking for one night.
Whoa, open bath forks.. I wonder if he has any teeth left? Love the front tire, kinda looks like.. 
