As the fall riding season winds down on the East Coast, the sportbike market has tightened up, with the year’s choicest machines long since spoken for or mothballed for another shot at a big sale come spring. There still are some gems to be had, though, and this 1996 Kawasaki ZX-7R is one. 1996 Kawasaki…
As special editions to begin with, Ducati Paul Smart 1000LEs generally see duty as garage queens, left largely stock and original. This one certainly has led a pampered existence thus far, but clearly was owned by someone who did not know the phrase “leave well enough alone.” 2006 Ducati Paul Smart 1000LE The list of…
Origami, if you’re not familiar, is the Japanese art of paper folding, and the resulting creations look like angular, abstract animals. KTM’s RC8R takes folded paper style to extremes, with elemental shapes and broad, flat panels that would look more at home on a concept bike than a production machine, like an origami Ducati 916.…
We have seen our fair share of VFR400Rs and lightweight, two-stroke screamers on home soil this year, but Honda’s pint-sized inline-four sportbikes have stayed fairly scarce, except for a few examples here and there. The other side of the pond is another story, where the rev-happy “training” bikes can be had for a song. 1988…
It has often been said that riding a slow bike fast is far more enjoyable than riding a fast bike slowly. Most of the hyper-super-mega cycles listed on these pages can exceed national speed limits in seconds – and first gear. But with a smaller bike, you need to work much harder to maximize your…
Unlike Honda’s NSR250R, the RS250R was Honda’s over-the-counter race bike intended for privateer teams. Of course, if you were a factory outfit, you could get your hands on something like the NSR250 or RS250RW, which honestly gets a bit confusing. Especially the fact that the NSR250 and NSR250R are completely different bikes, and the one…
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…
The early ’80s were a great time to be an enormous Japanese superbike, as Wes Cooley, Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson were busy catapulting your fortunes into the stratosphere. The Kawasaki KZ series in particular was enjoying the fruits of Lawson’s labor, as the flat tracker from Upland, California won the AMA Superbike…
