The Yamaha RZ500 promised GP-bike glory for the every man when it hit the scene in ’84, with a quartet of exhaust pipes poking out at odd angles producing a biblical scream. By ’85, Suzuki had rained on the parade a little with the RG500, which was lighter, more powerful and a few notches crazier,…
12.13.2017: Bob has decided to upgrade to a Featured Listing after we first posted this bike on November 30th. Links updated to latest auction. Good luck to buyers and seller! -dc When Yamaha and Suzuki dropped their 500cc two-stroke race replicas in the middle of the 1980s, the bikes effectively stopped the oil-burning horsepower wars…
The waning light of the two-stroke era really brought out the best Japan had to offer, with a spate of lightweight 250cc road racers with DOT concessions that would pull the front wheel more or less at will. Suzuki’s RGV250 v-twin topped the heap, with prodigious power, decent reliability and years of development to keep…
Things were coming up Max Biaggi in 1996, as the Roman was in the middle of a string of three 250cc Grand Prix world titles and his storied rivalry with Valentino Rossi was still nearly half a decade in the future. The Italian claimed his trophies aboard Aprilia’s fantastic RS250GP, so the factory threw some…
There were a lot of things that led to the Bimota V-Due’s inauspicious fall from grace, mostly related to costs and hype that would ultimately spell disappointment when the bike finally broke cover. But by far the bike’s worst flaw was its positively heinous fuel injection system, which was designed to keep the bike in…
Yet another two-stroke from the land of Craigslist, this 1985 Suzuki RG500 Gamma wears the brand’s iconic blue and white superbike livery and looks very nice, despite its fair share of scratches and scuffs. Further signs of the bike’s age and use are cracked bolt holes at the mirror mounts on the cowl. With the…
If memory serves, this is only the second 1987 Suzuki RG400 Walter Wolf we have featured with silver livery instead of the much more common navy blue. Further adding to the intrigue is this bike’s 400cc displacement, as we much more often feature its bigger 500cc brother. The seller claims to have had a bunch…
eBay has been awash this summer in rare and exciting two-and four-stroke quater-liter bikes from Japan, a testament to the collector market for these bikes, which are neither common nor terribly easy to import. This 1990 Suzuki RGV250SP is at least the third of its kind we have posted this summer, and it is offered…