Getting your hands on this bike will land you in a rarefied class normally reserved for the likes of the Barber Motorsports Museum and a few (very) well-heeled collectors. Once again, it comes from our friends at Iconic Motorbikes, whose collection of killer, historic bikes is both for sale and display. At present, though, this thing takes the cake as their premier offering. Even their perfect RC30 can’t touch it.
This bike is a zero-mile example of a piece of race bike history that you just will not get another chance at. If you have the means, move quickly. If you haven’t … Well, join the club. Needless to say, it is entirely flawless, from the tacked on lights to the rough-edged sand cast engine cases and undisguised oil lines.
Harley made these things in an effort to find legitimacy as a roadracing manufacturer after their rebirth in the mid-1980s. Being that Harley-Davidson had been long absent from any sort of twisty-track competition, building a from-scratch competitive racer became something of a millstone. Eventually, the VR1000 was born, with a 1,000cc v-twin that was almost unrecognizable next to their normal fare, save its narrow-angle layout. It put down close to 150 horsepower by the time it saw a racetrack.
To be legal for AMA Superbike, the Harley needed to build at least 25 VRs and get them made legal somewhere in the world. Eventually, they got one plated in Germany, which satisfied the AMA. The rest were sold with factory paperwork and little else, with paint so thin the carbon weave showed through and lights and blinkers as an absolute afterthought. After all those years of effort, the bikes turned up to racetracks with about 10 fewer horsepower than the competition, which hadn’t waited for them to catch up. Still, rider Miguel Duhamel declared the orange-and-black Milwaukee native to be the best handling race bike he had ridden. He switched to Honda in ’95.
From the seller:
1994 Harley Davidson VR1000 – 1 of 25 street / 1 of 50 ever produced
We are over the moon to have this amazing, rare, Iconic Motorbike in our Dealership / Museum and up for sale.Harley Davidson only made 50 of these amazing bikes in total and our research shows about half of them were equipped with headlights and such. This particular one has ZERO MILES!!!
The VR1000 is loaded with Carbon Fiber, Ohlins Forks, a dry clutch and when we’re rolling it around the museum, it feels incredibly light! Don’t miss this opportunity to add this gorgeous beast to your collection as you’ll NEVER find another!
Bike does not include a title but we do have the Official letter from Harley Davidson confirming the manufacturing of this particular bike. We can supply a bill of sale as well. We have the FULL FACTORY TOOL KIT which is brand new and packed from the factory.
These HD’s were built so that they could compete in World Superbike Homologation and as such were classified as off road machines, for that reason, MSO’s were not issued or made available.
You must come see this bike in person, you may not get another chance!
The asking price is $80,000. It’s worth it. Even if you never ride it, which, given the bike we’re talking about is advisable, this thing will cap any collection, and will make an incredible display piece for years to come.
Is management from H-D looking at this ad? As they sit and flail about with prototype dual-sport bikes and the FXD/R 114 the answer to how to shake up their image and expand the customer base is RIGHT HERE. Dust off the design, update the chassis, bolt a fresh design narrow V-Twin powerplant in there (aka FTR1200) and have a full-on sports, flat track and cafe versions. Race the thing in MotoAmerica (the manufacturer support is pretty weak right now … take advantage of that) and find some success. Please try. PLEASE.
Sorry Paul, they are too busy buying MV Agusta and then selling it for $1, screwing over Erik Buell, promoting rumors that they wlll buy Ducati and coming up with bad electric bikes to do that
On the plus side they used all the rd from this bike to build the V rod. Well I guess you could say that was a wast too. I loved when Harley was racing these bikes just wish they could have kept building off it.
Huge thank you to the gents at RSBFS for all your support, you’re site is truly the ONLY one I refer to often and since we sold so many bikes lately…We’ll be shopping for more soon!
Yeah, if I had 80k this would no longer be a zero mile bike. Yes, i lack discipline judgement and any sense of historical responsibility. I’d tape up the headlight and blinkers and go get my picture taken at a COTA track day. Find some track bodywork and store the oem in a climate controlled preservation chamber after that. Ride it till it can’t be serviced to be runnable anymore. Then put the original clothes back on and show it like an artifact and not tell anyone it doesn’t run anymore. Zero mile vs cancerous guts makes little difference if it is just a display piece. Donate it to a museum and take a tax break.
Life’s too short not to ride. Yeah I know, I don’t get it. But I also don’t got 80k. So it is just academic masturbation.
If you spend 80k on a bike and DON’T ride it, you need to have your head examind. It ain’t art, its a MACHINE. Use it!
I agree they all should be ridden but disagree it’s not art. I’d put a bike on display any day over a painting or a sculpture. Look at a Bimota or a classic Ducati or an old Norton or…absolutely beautiful machines! My favorite kind of art!
What are you, my long-lost twin?! I say pretty much the same thing about these bikes all the time. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad that perfect, zero-mile collectable examples exist. There should be exactly one of every bike, just for reference, but I sure as hell would never own something like that. I’m always matching my fantasy garage searches with quick visits to the Airtech website to see if I can get aftermarket bodywork. They’ve got a few Bimotas listed…
That’s a really good question: I know lots of random people in the industry are familiar with our site, so does anyone at HD read this stuff? I’d like to think a Harley sportbike like this would sell well, but I think it’s too much of an uphill battle. The Buell thing was complicated, but it didn’t help that Harley purists [and sportbike fans, frankly] rejected the whole idea, even when it had an actual Harley engine. I doubt a sportbike/flat track/cafe bike would work in all three forms, much as I love that idea, but they damn well could do a flat track/cafe bike, and I’ve been banging that drum for years now. They need that FTR1200, or their own version of Ducati’s Scrambler, or at least their own Triumph Bonneville… Of course, a money-losing but image-enhancing project like the VR1000 would be an amazing statement by HD that they are serious about performance motorcycles and changing their image.
Correction needs to be made on this one: AMA rules required that the bike be road legal for homologation, but didn’t say specifically where! HD found it couldn’t pass emissions easily here, but could be done in Poland- not Germany. Gee, you don’t think HD had a bit of financial and political influence on the AMA, do you? I’m glad it happened though, because it was pretty cool seeing it race with all the top notch rider$ they $igned to ride it. Thrilling to see Duhamel put it on the pole at Mid Ohio.
https://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/model/h-d/harley_davidson_vr_1000.htm
I’m glad to see others had the same thought I initially did; if i had the disposable cash, I’d ride the heck out of it. I enjoy being the occasional steward to history, but I’m also not afraid to present it in use exactly as it was intended from the day it was built. I fealt the same the day I found my low milage Kawasaki KZ1000 MKII basement find. I keep it in the shape I found it in, but it’s still incredibly awsome to put rubber to road and show what history can be all about.