The early 1980s were a bad time for speed. With a very few exceptions, cars had spent the previous decade becoming wheezy, lumbering and compromised. Motorcycles were yet to fully cross the Rubicon from being either quirky runabouts or the steeds of tattooed heathens to the mounts of true enthusiasts. And then in 1981, Kawasaki…
When the original GS1100 Katana hit the motorcycle show circuit ahead of it’s launch, the world gaped. The Katana was like nothing the motorcycling community had ever seen. It was also tremendously popular on the showroom floor, and consumers flocked to Suzuki’s flagship sport bike – advertised to be the fastest in the world in…
Update 11.16.2020: Due to an email issue on my end, the seller tried to contact me back in September that this bike sold just a few days after we had listed it. My apologies for the confusion, and congratulations to the buyer and seller! -dc We featured this grey-market Honda CBR250RR MC22 a while back.…
Today’s Kawasaki GPz900R “Ninja” is one of the most iconic Japanese sport bikes of all time: the image of Tom Cruise racing a Tomcat along a runway, with just a pair of sunglasses, a bomber jacket, and his million-dollar smile to protect him from bugs traveling at 221 feet per second was burned into the…
Update 8.21.2020: This bike has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc It’s still amazing to me that bikes like this MV Agusta F4 1000R can be had for so little money. Sure, modern bikes blow them into the weeds, especially in terms of their usability: a 200hp motorcycle would have been considered terrifying and…
Update 8.17.2020: This Katana has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Introduced in 1981, Suzuki’s Katana looked so radical and futuristic that it polarized the motorcycling community. Since the GSX-R that followed a couple years later really set the standard in terms of styling for pretty much every sportbike that followed, the Katana ended…
If you’re looking to sample MV’s four-cylinder wail but can’t contort yourself into the cramped riding position required of the utterly gorgeous F4, the Brutale 750S manages to pack most of that bike’s thrills into a much less painful package. Somehow, there are people out there who don’t like these, but I love the looks.…
Update 6.3.2020: This bike has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Kawasaki’s ZX-7R is finally getting its due and clean, low-mile examples are getting pretty hard to find anywhere near the rock-bottom prices they fetched not too long ago. Older, 1970s and early 1980s Kawis like the KZ1000R have found their collectible niche as…