Unlike the roadgoing, but still-sporty TZR series, Yamaha’s TZ bikes were track-only motorcycles with performance far exceeding what road riders might expect from their diminutive displacements and dimensions: technically, the Yamaha TZ125 isn’t even pint-sized as this post title implies, since Google reliably informs me that a pint is actually 473cc, and even a cup…
The Honda CBR400 was produced between 1988 and 2000 and was a perfect middle step between the entry-level 250RR and the supersport 600. Don’t let that “learner bike” displacement fool you: the CBR400 was in every way a grown-up sportbike: the liquid-cooled inline-four featured gear-driven cams, a six-speed gearbox, triple disc brakes, and a lightweight,…
Many of the weird and wonderful bikes we like to feature on this site appear in time-capsule condition, as if Doc Brown put them in a trailer behind his time-traveling DeLorean and towed them from the distant year 1985 into… The future! Others are patched-up wrecks described as having “patina” with “90% tread left on…
Smaller versions of big bikes are often built to a price. Even if they are serious sports machines, they can often lack some of the shiniest bells and whistles of the top-of-the range bikes. But not so the Yamaha FZR400. In fact, the 400 was actually considered to be a more sporting machine than the…
The road-going two-stroke fours from Suzuki and Yamaha normally tend to look a little awkward to my eye. The wheels and tires look too skinny, the brakes too small, the fairing bulbous and a little ungraceful. That all goes out the window with this 1988 Suzuki RG500Γ race bike, which seems better balanced all-around, and…
The TZR250 was Yamaha’s entry into the hotly-contested quarter-liter class wars that raged throughout the 80s and 90s. Early TZR250s were powered by a fairly conventional liquid-cooled parallel twin, and the last generation used a 90° v-twin like rivals from Suzuki and Honda. But in between, Yamaha experimented with an interesting solution to give the…
Relisted from last November, with a 20% price reduction – Martin In the early 1990s, Moto Guzzi was trying to revitalize their staid image and appeal to a younger, more sporting audience. Famous Guzzi tuners Ghezzi and Brian were brought in to style the new top-shelf sportbike, and the result was a machine uncharacteristically elegant…
Well here’s a real curiosity, another bike from the era of experimental engine configurations. Prior to the introduction of the KR-1 featured earlier this week, Kawasaki’s quarter-liter two-stroke sportbike reputation was upheld by this bike, the KR250. Although it’s powered by what is technically a parallel twin, the Kawasaki KR250’s engine is configured more like…