We feature a lot of rare motorcycles here on Rare Sportbikes for Sale. I mean, it’s right there in the title. But despite looking decidedly rough and perhaps a bit unremarkable, this 1989 Kawasaki KR-1R is one of just 180 built worldwide, making it one of the rarest sportbikes you’re likely to see posted anywhere.…
update: Sold for $12,250 Honda’s VFR750R may have codified the company’s endurance-racing formula, but the often-forgotten VF1000R laid the groundwork for that iconic machine. Designed for the same purpose, to homologate the platform for production-based racing classes, it included a raft of features that improved the bike’s competition prospects. This example has just undergone a…
I feel like the Buell S3 Thunderbolt is a bike that generates controversy here on RSBFS. Something about it not being a “real sportbike.” Sure, it’s a bit of a mongrel, a hodgepodge of top-shelf components, garden shed bodywork, and a torquey Harley Davidson lump all mixed up, with incongruous Harley clocks staring you in…
So-called “race replicas” have always been popular amongst the sportbike crowd, an expression of the “race on Sunday, sell on Monday” philosophy that drives the motorcycle economy. Most have just been paint and graphics packages designed to make the bikes in question more closely resemble their racing counterparts. A few were actual homologation specials, created…
If grey-market Japanese two-strokes are your thing, head on over to check out this eBay listing for a clean 1994 Honda NSR250 SP in the classic Rothmans livery. It looks like the seller is unloading his entire collection that includes two more MC28s with different liveries and a pair of Suzuki RGV250s, both with Lucky…
It’s pretty amazing to consider how far motorcycles have come in terms of performance over the past 30 years. Today’s superbikes weigh in at around the 450lb mark while making in excess of 200hp, with a comprehensive suite of electronics to make sure all that performance doesn’t murder us. But while modern superbikes are amazing…
Introduced in 1999, the Ducati 996 was the successor to the 916 and was obviously more evolutionary than revolutionary. But while Ducati didn’t want to mess with success in the looks department, the new bike featured a host of subtle but significant changes to the frame, fuel injection, and engine that led to improvements in…
For many years, naked sportbikes were seen as more relaxed, less extreme versions of faired bikes with the same displacement. The Japanese manufacturers were especially guilty of this until very recently, with their naked bikes using last-generation engines, steel in place of aluminum frames, and basic-spec suspension components. The Europeans, on the other hand, generally…