1990s Bimotas currently represent an amazing value, and this 1998 YB11 Superleggera has superbike performance, Yamaha reliability, and is very rare, all for under $10,000. “Superleggera” or “super light” is a style of construction that stresses lightweight materials and construction: Ducati’s Superleggera is so super and leggera that it actually weighs less than the British Superbike…
Considering just how rare Bimotas actually are, they’ve had a pretty strong influence on modern sportbikes. Take this Bimota HB3 for example: just 100 were ever made. And yet you can see that fully-faired, race-inspired styling that led to more mass-produced bikes like the GSX-R. In fact, Yamaha was very directly “inspired” by the Bimota’s…
Mid-1980’s BMW was already planning around the end of the air-cooled era, and developed the 1-liter straight four for the K100. Marketing naturally wanted pizazz, and the response was the 16-valve K1, with bodywork achieving an unheard-of 0.34 drag coefficient. Controversial as all ground-breaking designs are, the K1 was fast if not quick, and gave…
To stimulate interest in their flagship F4 that saw only occasional updates, MV Agusta trotted out a seemingly endless series of special-edition bikes with the usual collectors-only price tags, wild horsepower claims, and extremely limited production numbers. Certainly, today’s F4 1000 Veltro Strada counts as rare: just 99 were built, along with 23 of the…
Although it’s often the slinky bodywork that people remember about Bimotas, the frames are what really define them. The Bimota YB4 was designed around Bimota’s signature and unmistakable beam frame they used throughout the late 80s and 90s. No soft, moulded contours here: the spars look like girders that were extruded by some giant, industrial device, then cut and welded…
The sagas of some of the most well-known European manufacturers can read like film scripts, full of action and intrigue. But if Ducati’s story is a bit like an Indiana Jones movie, with death-defying thrills and narrow escapes from doom, Triumph’s history is a bit like a zombie movie, since they were basically dead and…
Kawasaki’s ZX-7 Ninja was known in other markets as the ZXR750, although I’m really not clear on why. Calling your “Fireblade” a “CBR900” makes plenty of sense if your target audience is more excited by technical names than by evocative ones. But shuffling a couple letters and numbers around doesn’t send a very different message……
The Honda CBR400 was produced between 1988 and 2000 and was a perfect middle step between the entry-level 250RR and the supersport 600. Don’t let that “learner bike” displacement fool you: the CBR400 was in every way a grown-up sportbike: the liquid-cooled inline-four featured gear-driven cams, a six-speed gearbox, triple disc brakes, and a lightweight,…