Many of the weird and wonderful bikes we like to feature on this site appear in time-capsule condition, as if Doc Brown put them in a trailer behind his time-traveling DeLorean and towed them from the distant year 1985 into… The future! Others are patched-up wrecks described as having “patina” with “90% tread left on…
The road-going two-stroke fours from Suzuki and Yamaha normally tend to look a little awkward to my eye. The wheels and tires look too skinny, the brakes too small, the fairing bulbous and a little ungraceful. That all goes out the window with this 1988 Suzuki RG500Γ race bike, which seems better balanced all-around, and…
Like any market, collector car and bike values can be difficult to predict, which is why they call it “speculating.” Sure, that Anniversary Edition Corvette looks pretty sharp in a giant, plastic wedge kind of way, but will it ever be valuable enough to really justify squirreling away one instead of driving it? The same…
Looking very much like a little brother to the RG500, this Suzuki RG250Γ offers up sophistication to match its larger stablemate: anti-dive forks, Full Floater suspension, Suzuki’s Automatic Exhaust Control that increased the weedy two-stroke midrange, and a six-speed gearbox. The package was very light, weighing in at 286lb dry and the water-cooled 247cc parallel…
Fresh off the boat from Japan, this Suzuki RGV250 Γ “Gamma” is the higher-spec SP model that featured fully-adjustable suspension, along with a close-ratio gearbox and a dry clutch. 1988 was the first year of the RGV that replaced the parallel-twin of the RG250 with a new, 90° 249cc v-twin engine that also found its way…
Today’s very clean Suzuki RG500Γ “Gamma” hails from power-mad Australia, where it seems like there are a disproportionate number of these two-stroke terrors stashed away. With fewer than 10,000 produced for all markets during three years of production, the bike was a true race-replica and shared its wild liquid-cooled square-four engine with no other model…
Fans of bikes like today’s RG500 Γ “Gamma” may fantasize that they are every bit as fast as a modern sportbike. But they’re probably viewing things through rose-tinted glasses: 95hp and 350lbs dry aren’t exceptional numbers today. Matched with the flexible frame and shockingly skinny tires, you’re looking at something would probably have a hard…
Race-replicas are generally garish affairs: race bike paint is intended to offer up a striking rolling billboard that differentiates the machine on track and gets attention for sponsors. But the Suzuki RG500 Walter Wolf replica offers up subtle but effective style that’s very unusual among race-reps. Maybe that’s because Walter Wolf never actually sponsored racing…