Today’s Featured Listing spotlights a matched pair of bikes that were effectively rivals both on and off the track: Suzuki’s RG500Γ “Gamma” and Yamaha’s RD500LC. Both were Grand Prix replicas that used 500cc liquid-cooled, two-stroke four-cylinder engines, although Suzuki used a square configuration, as opposed to Yamaha’s vee. Suzuki’s design philosophy hewed closer to that…
Located on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo in the Japanese prefecture of Chiba comes today’s ultra rare find: a Suzuki RGB500 race bike. Created by the factory to outfit privateer racers, the RGB500 was steadily improved over the years in the direction of – but always slightly behind – the full factory effort. Still, this…
To celebrate its long history of Grands Prix racing in the smaller formulas – and to commemorate the 1962 introduction of the 50cc GP class – Honda produced the CB50R as a limited run model. These bikes are very rare in the United States (initially offered in Japan and abroad), and were purportedly assembled by…
It’s not often real examples of top tier motorcycle racing machinery are made available for sale to the general public, but here we are. Got some coin to spend? You can have Troy Bayliss’ Ducati GP3 decorating your living room, which is pretty impressive when you have company over. I only know of one other…
Laypeople often love cars and motorcycles with gratuitous stylistic frippery: air vents leading to nowhere, extraneous “engine beautification” panels to cover up the oily bits and wiring, unnecessary surface details to break up large panels. They don’t really understand the function of all those parts, or aerodynamic styling, so if it looks right, it is…
Racebikes are different than other bikes we feature on RSBFS. Where the goal for many collectible roadbikes is absolute originality, or at least limited, period-correct updates, the whole point of a racebike is that it’s a rough-and-tumble artifact, a bit of living history, and battle scars are okay. If the machine in question is historically…
For many years, Grand Prix motorcycle racing was dominated by two-strokes: 125s, 250s, and the hairy 500s that carried the likes of Schwantz, Rainey, and Doohan to victory. But as the popularity of two-strokes waned on the road, the formula was changed to allow four-strokes to compete, and ultimately all Grand Prix motorcycle racing machines…
Not too long ago, all kinds of weird and wonderful sportbikes from the mid-1980s were available for reasonable sums. Until recently, they weren’t really old enough to be considered classics in terms of styling, and they weren’t even close to modern machines in terms of outright performance or handling. It probably didn’t help much that…