I’ve mentioned this before, but everything just sounds cooler in Italian. If you want to intimidate someone, just shout gibberish at them in German: anything you say sounds clipped and military and very, very serious. But yell at someone in Italian, and it just sounds like you’re trying to very emphatically seduce them. I mean,…
Update 3.14.2018: Turns out this one sold faster than we could post it. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc A modern literbike is a relatively peaky beast: chasing horsepower without increasing displacement means ever-higher revs are required, and a six-speed box makes sense. It’s telling that bikes like today’s Featured Listing Yamaha’s FZR1000, one of…
Descendant of Yamaha’s OW01 homologation special, the YZF-750R was a vaunted endurance racer in race trim, and a two-time Bike of the Year winner in the mid-90’s. A victim of the displacement arms race and an aging platform, the Yamaha 750 lasted only a few years. This YZF might be a little rough around the…
By the end of the 1990s, it could be argued that Bimota was basically irrelevant. After all, the whole point of a Bimota was simple: take a powerful, reliable engine from a bike from an established manufacturer, then slip it into a stiff, lightweight frame with the best suspension money could buy at both ends,…
While most small-displacement bikes these days are relatively simple, economical singles and twins, the Yamaha FZR250R spec sheet reads like a much bigger machine: aluminum beam frame, four cylinders, four valves per cylinder, dual 0verhead cams, an EXUP exhaust valve, and a six-speed gearbox. That adds up to a claimed 45hp and 18 ft-lbs of…
Obviously, the first-generation Yamaha R1 isn’t particularly rare in terms of production numbers: this revolutionary sportbike turned the category on it’s ear, offering big power in a middleweight package, and it sold well as a result. I’m posting this one up because, unlike most of the R1s you’ll find on eBay and Craigslist, this one…
Considering that Bimota is still… in business [was going to type something else, but had second thoughts as maybe “thriving” is a bit too strong a word] it’s a little surprising that some of their older offerings are so affordable, considering their exotic looks, extreme rarity, high specification, and performance that will at least keep…
It’s pretty common for cars in the USA to get evocative names like “Cougar” and “Charger” or components with nonsensical, but cool-sounding names like “Vortec” or “Jetfire.” In the motorcycling world, the reverse seems more common, since today’s bike was known as the Yamaha YZF1000 here in the USA while overseas it was the “Thunderace,” big…