Just a few days ago, we had a solar eclipse that ran across eastern Canada, held up by the tinfoil hatters as a warning of impending doom. That hasn’t happened… yet. But perhaps we’ve just received a second warning, a sign of the apocalypse—Ural is teasing an updated engine with higher performance. Sort of.
A hot-rodded Ural is something we never thought we’d see, but Ural’s last PR email said this:
“As you can imagine, in the last two years we’ve been totally consumed by the most vital daily business matters. Well, we have good news. In cooperation with O.M.I. Srl an Italian engineering company and aRacer SpeedTek, a Taiwanese specialist in engine management systems, we started a big project to develop and implement some long overdue changes to our motorcycle. Please don’t get too excited just yet, the changes won’t come to live tomorrow. However, we do hope you’ll like it when time comes”
What are they talking about? Ural has just completed a massive shift, moving its factory to Kazakhstan after decades in Russia, where it was founded in the run-up to World War II. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought sanctions on its industries, and US-managed Ural just plain moved out of the country as a result. That meant a lot of stress and work, rebuilding the factory, but it also meant the opportunity to start afresh at the new plant.
Judging by the Italian and Taiwanese firms involved, it appears Ural is working on some sort of optional upgrade kit for its flat twin engines, although its production run is so low that it’s entirely feasible that a small-output shop could easily handle the workload of updating the full factory line. Just guessing, by the history of the companies involved, the Italians will be working on some sort of hard parts upgrade to the engine, maybe even a turbo, and the Taiwanese will work up some sort of ECU or other electronic wizardry to take advantage of it.
Ural teased the image of the crank below, but gave us no real explanation for that.
There’s no point in getting tooooo excited, because Ural itself says that there’ll be a long wait for this tech. But considering how long Urals went without significant updates, it’s been very exciting to see the company overhaul its machines over the past 5-10 years, with EFI and other changes now all through the lineup… and apparently more to come.
