It’s a good time to be a two-stroke enthusiast here in the USA. Bikes like today’s Honda NSR250R that were long considered nearly unobtainable are being shipped over by enterprising individuals and companies, now that some of them are old enough to make that a viable option. The NSR250R featured a 90° liquid-cooled 249cc v-twin…
Update 8.1.2016: The seller has notified us that this bike has sold. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc V4-powered sports motorcycles are all the rage now, but they were long associated with just one manufacturer: Honda. Their homologation RC30 set the standard for “exotic” in the late 1980s and 1990s: V4, gear-driven cams, single-sided swingarms…
The term “race replica” can mean different things: a stock bike with a graphics design that mimics a famous competition machine, or an homologation machine that will be used in part or nearly whole in some form of production racing. But all that goes out the window here: this is a genuine World Superbike Ducati…
Update 5.2.2016: Seller has received a deposit. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc The 400cc Honda NC30 has long lived in the shadow of its bigger brother. Not particularly fast, but definitely expensive then and now, there’s certainly a lot to like about the VFR400, but outright speed isn’t really on the list. Instead, you’re…
Update 6.12.2016: SOLD! Price is $7,500 Introduced in 1986, the GSX-R1100 followed the age-old tradition of stuffing a big motor into a small package. It was more complicated than that, of course, and the 1100 isn’t just a 750 with a bigger engine. But the idea is there, and it can easily be argued that…
Although the Honda NSR two-stroke sportbikes were by no means “starter bikes” and were very high-performing motorcycles, they were still relatively affordable and often bought by riders not flush enough to afford the taxes on bigger bikes. Basically: young hooligans bought them. Because of this, nice examples are pretty thin on the ground in their…
Based on YZF750 race bikes from 1987 and 1988, the Yamaha FZR750R OW01 went head-to-head with Honda’s RC30, although on the surface it may have seemed less exotic. While Honda’s machine used a gear-driven V4 configuration with a striking single-sided swingarm, the Yamaha mostly looked like a garden-variety FZR750. But under the skin, it was…
The Honda CBR400RR we featured last week was never officially imported to the USA, but its naked stablemate the CB-1 was, although in pretty limited numbers and for just two years: 1989 and 1990. It was a strange choice for Honda to make in the land of extremes, where we only seem to like motorcycles…