Today’s Laverda Ghost will certainly have a predictable share of haters, but it offered up a unique, stylish alternative to bikes like Ducati’s Monster. Powered by an air/oil-cooled, four-valve per cylinder 668cc parallel-twin with Weber-Marelli fuel injection that put a claimed 70hp through the six-speed gearbox, the bike was down on power a bit when…
A bit of a hulking dinosaur, even when new, this Laverda RGS 1000 lives at the transition point between the old and the new, as the European manufacturers were being eclipsed by the Japanese when it came to sports motorcycles. For a long time, they’d hung on by being able to out-handle the upstarts from…
1999 Laverda 750S on eBay The Laverda 750S was just like everything else the other manufacturers were making in the 90s… yet completely different at the same time. When you look at it, there are hints of Kawasaki’s ZX-7, Honda’s CBR900RR, Ducati’s 851/888 and even Suzuki’s RF series. It’s a mashup of styles that somehow…
Laverda was one of the unfortunate casualties of the Japanese onslaught of the 1970’s. Confronted by reliable, affordable multis from Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Honda, many Italian and British companies found themselves in dire straights, unable to compete in showrooms or on the street. And while many marques have seen short-term resurrections courtesy of…
This Laverda SFC is bit of a throwback to another era, when you really could buy a motorcycle, ride it to the track, rip off the lights, and actually compete at the professional level. Sure, there are classes today that require bikes to be largely stock, but this Laverda is really more like the equivalent…
The zane-era laverda bikes tick a lot of the Rare Sport Bike boxes; limited production numbers, discontinued marque, italian heritage, smexy looks in an age where eye-bleeding graphics packages were the norm, etc. The final generation Zane bikes were even recently ranked as one of the top 5 “future classics” by Bonhams. Personally I am…
Unable to compete with the ruthless, technological march of the Japanese manufacturers, Laverda’s SFC 1000 was an attempt to capitalize on their past endurance racing glories, a last gasp before they went under, prior to their relatively brief resurrection in the 1990’s. To be honest, I didn’t even realize that Laverda was still making bikes…
Many of the machines featured on this site are pristine, beautiful examples, the best available anywhere. This is not one of those bikes. But it is rare, and it is a sportbike. And it’s worth looking at because it’s pretty hard to find Laverdas like this in any condition here in the USA. If you…