From a styling standpoint, motorcycles of the 1980’s were going through a bit of an awkward, adolescent phase… But continuing with that analogy, major growth and changes were occurring under the skin, and Japanese race replicas like this Yamaha RZV500 featured all sorts of wild, innovative technology. Yamaha’s GP bike for the road pulled out…
Prior to the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” S1000RR, BMW’s sportbikes were decidedly offbeat. They were almost like the Saab of the motorcycle world, with remote-operated brake master cylinders, shaft-drive, unconventional suspensions, and that durable and charismatic, but very, very wide horizontally-opposed engine. And their last hurrah before the stunningly capable S1000RR was…
Today’s Harley-Davidson RR250 may be new to most of you. We don’t get the opportunity to feature Harley-Davidson motorcycles on this site too often, unless we’re talking about throbbing pushrod v-twins hiding in quirky Buells. And all the “boat-anchor” jokes aside, Harley has plenty of racing heritage, although mostly outside of what interests most of…
The Honda NC30 was officially introduced in 1989, although this one obviously slipped in under the wire as, according to the seller, it was manufactured in December of 1988. This was the first year of the smaller V4 to feature the iconic look seen here, with dual round headlamps to match the single-sided swingarm and…
Introduced in 1987, the 851 was a huge leap forward for Ducati, adding four-valve heads, liquid-cooling, and fuel-injection to their 90° v-twin. The resulting engine was good for a claimed 93hp at the rear wheel and was dubbed the “Desmoquattro” for obvious reasons. The new bike allowed Ducati to again be competitive in racing, and…
Introduced in 2008, the Bimota DB7 is yet another collaboration with Ducati and has been one of their most successful bikes in terms, not only of sales numbers, but in terms of function. While they’ve always offered on-paper advantages over the bikes from which they borrow their engines, many Bimotas, right out of the box,…
Bimota’s BB3 is only the third collaboration between the Bimota and BMW. This is likely because, for most of BMW’s history, Ze Germans produced engine and drivetrain combos not really suited to the sort of lightweight sportbikes Bimota generally builds. The BB1 was powered by BMW’s Rotax single from their and, like most Bimotas was…
Update 5.13.2015: First listing was a no sale at $20,800 reserve not met. Relisted now with a buy-it-now of $21,500. Good luck to buyers and seller! -dc Kawasaki’s Z1R-TC is the kind of bike they just don’t make anymore, mainly because repeat customers are so important and dead customers generally can’t buy anything. It was…