Rare as hen’s teeth here in the USA, Honda’s little RVF400 [NC35] superbike made it into the country exclusively through grey-market imports, often via Canada. The RVF400 replaced the VFR400 in 1994 and used a smaller version of the bigger 750cc bike’s gear-driven V4 engine. Like the 750, the 400 used a 360° “big-bang” firing…
Introduced in 1999 and sold for just two years, the exotic Yamaha YZF-R7 OW02 was the long-awaited successor to the OW01 of the late 1980’s, a barely-legal roadbike intended to homologate the R7 for World Superbike competition. But after just two years, Yamaha pulled the plug on the bike and their WSBK team as well.…
Bike’s like Aprilia’s high-strung RS250 two-stroke is really this website’s raison d’être: specifications that speak to an almost single-minded pursuit of speed, race-bred bodywork, rarity, and an exotic nameplate. The icing on the cake is that the RS250 is relatively attainable, if you are willing to accept the compromises inherent in such a focused design.…
Long forgotten in the wake of the 916, the Ducati 851 and 888 have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, likely because they are seen as the genesis of Ducati’s four-valve, liquid-cooled v-twin superbikes that may have reached its apex with the Panigale: Ducati is struggling in WSBK and there is talk of…
Look, I love the Bimota Tesi and the Honda RC30 as much as the next guy. But if you stare too long at the sun, you’ll go blind. Also, I can’t afford those bikes. So while I do love to look and lust after them, I also love to look around for more affordable exotica,…
I saw this, and my jaw dropped. But before I gush over this bike, I’ll admit: it’s difficult to understand this extremely rare and extremely expensive Ducati/NCR New Blue without a bit of history about Old Blue. In the early 1970’s, a couple of Cycle World editors were racing one of only a handful of…
Look, I’ll be honest. There are basically two reasons I like writing about Suzuki’s two-stroke sportbikes. One, they’re pretty funky, like this RG500Γ Gamma you see here that sports an engine with a very rare square-four configuration. Two, I get to use the cool Greek “Gamma” character which, along with the umlauted “O” for “Öhlins”…
The Honda CBR400RR we featured last week was never officially imported to the USA, but its naked stablemate the CB-1 was, although in pretty limited numbers and for just two years: 1989 and 1990. It was a strange choice for Honda to make in the land of extremes, where we only seem to like motorcycles…