One of the most interesting and promising areas of modern motorcycle development has been with suspension systems. At the rear, bikes went from hard tail to twin shocks, and then stagnated for decades until the rising rate single shock came to vogue – as it continues today. The front of the motorcycle has explored a…
Taking Italian suspension, style and bespoke build quality know-how and shoving it full of deadnuts-reliable and prodigious power from the other side of the Atlantic, or in this case the Pacific, is a time-honored tradition. In the ’60s, the likes of Bizzarrini and Iso executed the formula to devastating effect in cars. But Bimota ported…
This Bimota YB11 Superleggera isn’t just a sportbike, or even an exotic sportbike. It’s a high-performance boutique motorcycle, one of just 650 ever built. Of course, that’s pretty much mass production by Bimota standards. It doesn’t have quite the cachet of Honda’s limited-production homologation superbikes, but consider that Honda made almost 5,000 Honda RC30s, compared…
Bimota is known for taking the road less traveled – in order to travel that road faster and with more exclusivity. And while Bimota has had some brilliant successes and failures, it was the SB6R that promised mainstream potential. Housing a GSX-R1100 powerplant magically wrapped in aluminum and fiberglass, the SB6R weighed less than the…
Even Bimota was not immune to the siren call of Yamaha’s 130 hp FJ1200, producing one of their only biposto models. This example has been carefully preserved in South Africa. 1987 Bimota YB5 ( South Africa ) for sale on eBay Yamaha had recently given their air/oil-cooled four a big displacement bump and tuned it…
Please note the seller has opted to enable comments so interested parties can ask questions. Thanks! -dc Bimota went in a strangely practical direction in the late 1990s, perhaps realizing that the well-heeled riders that could afford their machines cared more about quality and style than the did about lap times: even the fabled Tesi…
Many of the Yamaha-powered Bimotas like today’s YB8 look suspiciously similar, and while I’m sure there are physical differences in the frames and fairings, I’d also bet that many parts are interchangeable between them. The YB8 used an updated YB6 frame, along with Yamaha’s 1002cc, five-valve inline-four and EXUP exhaust system from the FZR1000. During…
The DB1 wasn’t Bimota’s first bike, but it perfectly embodies the company’s philosophy of taking a well-developed engine from an outside manufacturer and putting it into a package that was lighter, sleeker, and better-handling. That wasn’t really all that difficult to do when you’re looking at beasts like the Suzuki GSX1100: just take the good…