One school of thinking about fast bike riding posits that the goal is speed, and that the motorcycle itself is a mere tool for achieving that end. But although a track-day GSX-R makes plenty of sense from a purely practical point of view, practical can be a little boring, so why not go fast with…
For some people, a race replica just isn’t enough. And if you want the real thing, a genuine racebike can be very pricey to run, and parts might be literally, not just figuratively, impossible to find. Sure, you can occasionally buy an NSR500V, but can you find parts to rebuild the engine? No, you cannot.…
I’m a big fan of “budget exotica” mainly because I’m on a budget and I like exotica. First generation Speed Triples and Daytonas, Brutales, and Monsters are all really affordable ways to get a rare performance motorcycle for very few dollars, relatively speaking, but if you want a single motorcycle that can do just about…
At a glance, you might be thinking, “Hey, when did I get redirected to ClassicSportbikesforSale?” But no, this isn’t a vintage machine, it’s a Honda GB500 TT that was built in 1989. Strangely, it was both ahead of its time and retro, something that was really only achieved by the GB500 and Moto Guzzi’s 1000S.…
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,…