This gorgeous Suzuki RGB500 is for sale in California and Tad wrote it up on our sister site, Classic SportBikes For Sale. Here is an excerpt:
Ridden by such luminaries as Barry Sheene and Randy Mamola, the two-stroke Suzuki RGB500 was eventually developed into the dominant machine you see here, but it went through a significant evolution following its introduction in 1974. As you’d expect, the bike always had power to spare, but high speed handling was suspect at first.
By the time the 1982 bike rolled around, Suzuki had moved to a “square” 54mm x 54mm engine for a grand total of 495cc. It was far more reliable than previous iterations and featured the same stepped cylinders seen on the RG500 Gamma road bike that had the rear pair of cylinders raised up slightly higher than the front pair. With a dry weight of 292lbs and 120hp, the bike could reach speeds of up to 170mph, which is pretty terrifying considering the tire technology of the time.
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1982 Suzuki RGB500 for sale on eBay
1982 RGB500mk7 XR40
This is not a street bike folks, this is the real deal, A real factory Suzuki GP road race bike… This bike has the stepped square 4 motor with magnesium crankcases, magnesium carburetors, and dry clutch… The Chassis is loaded with magnesium, Titanium and Aluminum, stuff you would expect to find on a factory race bike… First year of “Full Floater” monoshock suspension… Chassis number 42 motor number 49… Bike is in unrestored, excellent condition, just as it rolled off the race track in 1982… This bike from part of the team Heron Suzuki stable, bike has been museum store in Japan since last raced… these bikes are tad more rare than a TZ750 and much more powerful… It is the perfect bike to dominate vintage racing and is eligible for the “classic TT” in Phillips island This is a rare opportunity to own a real factory GP bike, don’t let it slip by, you’ll be sorry if you do…
I believe I saw this bike at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering a couple of years ago. It was perfect. If you have 65k to throw down on a bike this is the one.
This one belongs to a friend and will end up in Vegas at the auction in January if it doesn’t sell first. It’ll be fun to watch the bidding and see how high this thing goes….The stratosphere I’d say.
Fantastic bike. Hard to say if more interesting than TZ750 or RS500. Also condition looks to be really fair.
But is it really factory XR40? I don´t think so, just nice produsction racer RGB500. XR40 had aluminium frame just in 1982.
It’s a nice mk7 not an xr40 as has production frame and engine but the brake calipers might be factory earlier xr27 or xr34 -lovely bike but in Europe a Us$ 35k machine
I had a regular RG500 and was fast,could only imagine how much faster this one is, even if is just a street racer and maybe not a factory XR40, rarely see one for sale and I personally find the price fair. Good luck with the sale.
My all time favorite color scheme.
I think 916 is correct, if you look at Randy Mamola’s 82 race bike you can see the aluminum frame.