Yamaha’s two-stroke Grand Prix replica went by a few different names, depending on where it was sold: RD500LC in Europe, RZV500R for the Japanese market, and RZ500 in Canada and Australia. You’ll note that nowhere do we mention which version we got here in the USA. The reason? We didn’t: this wild, two-stroke four-cylinder was…
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,…
Update 10.27.2017: SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Like Ducati’s MotoGP inspired Desmosedici, the square four in the Suzuki RG500Γ “Gamma” in today’s Featured Listing wasn’t actually a detuned version of the race bike’s engine. Race bikes engines are built for power, not longevity, and simply “de-tuning” is probably not going be enough to…
It’s hard to imagine that, just a couple years before the introduction of the GSX-R750, Suzuki’s top-performing repli-racer was the stylish, but very last-generation GS1000S, a bike with twin shocks, handlebars, a center-stand, and a bar-mounted bikini fairing. The original “Slabbie” GSX-R750 that came along in 1985 brought modern endurance-racing style to the masses and…
Triumph’s entire 1990s range of sport, sport-touring, retro, and naked machines like this original Speed Triple was built around a common spine frame and two engines, the 885cc inline triple seen here and a larger-displacement inline four. This allowed Triumph to quickly create new variations and mirror market trends without sacrificing quality, a strategy that…
Sometimes, the very final version of a car or motorcycle is a pale shadow of the original, as the years inevitably add pounds and dilute the purity of what made the original example so desirable. But the Honda NSR250R went out with a bang instead of a whimper, at the top of its game, and…
Many of the most iconic race replicas are rolling billboards for tobacco products: Marlboro, John Player, Gauloises, Lucky Strike. Of course, that’s no longer the case, with tobacco manufacturers largely banned from advertising on race bikes and cars, but it’s hard to deny that those designs are memorable. But what if you’re a racing fan,…
The 1980s were a very exciting time in the motorcycling world, especially for fans of Japanese bikes, and a huge variety of machines were available in a dizzying array of configurations: two-strokes and four-strokes, singles, twins, triples, fours, and even six-cylinder engines. And it wasn’t just engines that saw the application of innovative new technologies:…