By the early 1990s, pretty much everyone making a hard-core sportbike was using an inline four engine for their regular production motorcycles. And why not? An inline four is a relatively compact engine, is capable of making excellent power for a given displacement, is smooth-running, and can achieve much higher revs than configurations using fewer,…
A small-displacement motorcycle with a four-cylinder powerplant like this Kawasaki ZXR250 really makes no practical sense: singles and parallel-twins are simple to manufacture, inexpensive to maintain, easier to package, torquey, and fun to ride. Up to a certain size, where the weight of a single piston and connecting rod create unacceptable vibrations that irritate the…
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…