The 1982 Suzuki Katana is a beautiful example of a manufacturer using the time-honored tradition of raiding the parts bin to make a machine whose impact multiplied the sum of its parts. With its running gear filched from the GS line, the 1982 Katana was a race-bred little brother to the GS1100 bruiser, but it…
Practical sportbikes like the Yamaha FZR400 generally weren’t babied and pampered, or cherished in the way that seems so common with Italian superbikes: for an FZR400 fan, “to cherish” means to flog mercilessly on a canyon road or tight track, passing bigger bikes around the outside on that skinny 140-section 18″ rear tire… But nice,…
During the 80’s heyday, Honda showed a graduated selection of displacements with two- or four-stroke engines in various configurations. The early CBR250R was destined for an upscale beginner and came to the U.S. only via the grey market. This 1988 four cylinder 250 looks good and its black/gold livery doesn’t stretch the truth with racey…
The Yamaha FZR400 is becoming a rare beast, as they were only sold here for three model years and were handily outsold by their bigger siblings. That’s a shame, because the little Yammy was really a higher-spec piece than its 600cc stablemate, with an aluminum chassis instead of the bigger bike’s much less graceful steel…
Short of a racing license and incredible luck, there generally just isn’t a way to get your hands on world-championship-caliber racing machinery. Even if it wasn’t out of the price range of mere mortals, you’d have a hard time convincing the companies that sell this stuff to let any old squid loose on the world…
It came up recently in the comments section, but I got into motorcycles relatively late in life. I mean, I always thought they were cool, but they just seemed so dangerous, and I knew I’d never hear the end of it from my family and friends. They’re also of limited practical value in the northeastern…
One of these days, I’m going to write a Suzuki GSX1000S Katana post that incorporates all of the “edgy styling” and “sharp detailing” and “cutting edge design” jokes into one, long sword reference, every sentence carefully forged into a kind of Damascus steel masterpiece of bad puns. Today is not that day though. Instead, I’ll…
Update December 2019: This bike has been sold to an RSBFS reader. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc As we spill countless pixels on aging, air-cooled weapons of yesteryear, bikes that ride on weird anti-dive forks and odd-size tires, it’s easy to forget that machines like the first-generation Yamaha R1 are quickly approaching classic status…