Crossbow Calendar
Certainly one of the first motorcyle pinup calendars started 17 years ago by former Superbike magazine editor John Winthrope in England, with assistance by Vic Barnes. The Crossbow calendar always features a diverse mix of sportbikes, racebikes, naked bikes, exotics, and just plain off the wal weird stuff like this year's Harley V-Rod trike and a turbo Yamaha v-Max, and a MPC Ural Military Sidecar outfit.

The Crossbow models are the prerequisite popular British Page 3 girls, who on some pages appear topless and on other pages not (?). Our favorites this year include the very sexy Nicola McLean and Rachel Mundy. But we also miss last year's sexy cover girl Jodie Oram who should have earned a return performance, and the fact none of the calendar girls models are featured in more photos on the Crossbow website.

Crossbow upgraded to a high quality 15x15 spiral wire bound format a few years back which we like. But the larger format and quality sheet press printed calendar needs to be photographed with a larger format camera for improved sharpness. We'd like to see the pictures run full page width without all the side text. The Crossbow Calendar (£9 ) and other products including our FastDates.com Calendar line are available to IE browser users only at Crossbow-Calendars.com

Superbike Magazine Calendar
Superbike magazine has the potential to produce a really incredible calendar, but lucky for us they don't! The constraints of making their calendar an affordable free give-a-way packaged in a poly bag with the December year end issue of Superbike means it's not perfect.Their calendar is a saddle stitched fold-in-the middle magazine format, inexpensively web printed on lightweight 100lb. coated cover stock paper. Expect the thin paper calendar to tear through its punch hole and fall off the wall within weeks of hanging it up, or as soon as your buddy lifts the pages to flip through it. And because it is web printed the skin tone of the models is not always perfect. It does fold open to a nice 17 x 11 3/4 inch size, but in giving us nice big pictures the calendar grid at the bottom of the page is pretty useless and very difficult to read.

The 2003 calendar shots are revived 2002 Superbike magazine cover / centerfold bike and model shots which just ran the past year. The bikes are mostly current production bikes which the magazine featured and tested, including the Italian exotics like MV Agusta and Benelli.

Now that we're finish slamming Superbike, we'll give them four stars(!) for having the most beautiful young model topless models posed up close and personal. Together with excellent quality studio shots of the girls and the bikes by Anthony Butler and Paul Barshon. While the graphic layout and Photoshop reworking of the images by Huw Willams and Jayne Toyne is also first class.

And we'll slam them again for not paying their models a fair working wage. We tried to set them up with our own Miss Great Britain Nicki Lane for a feature shoot, but they didn't wan to pay her much more than cab fare for a day's shoot and she had to decline.

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Performance Bikes Magazine Calendar
Like Superbike, Performance Bikes offers their calendar as a freebie with their December issue. This calendar is also saddle stitched (stapled-in-the middle magazine format), web printed on lightweight 100lb. coated cover stock paper. It also opens to a 17 x 11 3/4 inch size. Their art department's design of the calendar is just plain bad with poor layouts, photo croping and type use. The skin tone of the models is really off. Many of the girls are an off-yellow color or just plain faded.

If you want a calendar grid you can write on, the Performance Bikes calendar is big enough with almost one full page devoted to the date grid. But expect the thin paper calendar to tear through its punch hole and fall off the wall within weeks of repeated use.

Again, the 2003 calendar shots are the magazine's revived 2002 cover / centerfold bike and model shots which just ran the past year. Credit goes for the bikes being either top factory or privater race bikes, but negative marks goes for the tight cropping. poor layout design and medicore photograpahy that makes the bikes difficult to enjoy. They really blow it in jamming an editorial style product release ad on the date grid page, forcing the girl pictures to be really small, when they should be a tall as the grid and take up the whole page.

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Dreamgirls Calendar
The first motorcycle pinuip calendar in America started back in 1985, with Dreamgirls origionally featuring custom Harleys and licensed by Harley-Davison as an official product until 1998 when they dropped it for political reasons. Many people still call it "The Harley Calendar" of which it is no longer. The current publisher of Dreamgirls is StarWest who uses custom bikes submitted by private owners, some built by known builders and some not too special. The models are all Los Angles "B" pinup models shot in nice locations. Photography changed for 2003 with the hiring of top LA photographer Kim Mizuno. High quality printing in a large 15 x15" wire bound format. At selected dealers. $14.95

Iron & Lace Calendar
Dream Girls competes with our FastDates.com Calendar title
Iron & Lace which is also a 15-inch design wire spriral bound, but printed on even heavier high quality art board. Bikes are the latest leading edge customs from top name builders across America like Paul Yaffe, Jim Nassi, Jesse James, and our models are well known celebrity movie stars, national beauty pageant winners and centerfolds from Playboy, Penthouse, Perfect 10 magazines. Selected dealers and HERE. $15.95

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