With early Laverdas like the Jota and SFC headed into the stratosphere in terms of prices, and even bikes from the tail-end of triple production starting to command five-digit prices, it’s no surprise to see this very clean but not as well-known Laverda RGA Jota sitting north of $12,000… By the early 1980s, Laverda was…
Following on the heels of and offering a more practical alternative to the Tornado, the Benelli TnT offered up wide bars, weird naked insect styling, and big power. For a while, these were all over eBay, sitting unsold in dealers’ showrooms with slightly ridiculous asking prices, then with reasonable ones… Then they disappeared. I’m guessing…
Laverda’s big-bruiser RGS1000 comes from an era when the European brands were struggling in the face of the Japanese Big Four’s onslaught. To keep pace required serious levels of financial and manufacturing muscle, and most of the European brands just could not compete. Some, like BMW hung on to a niche market, with loyal sport-touring…
Today’s Laverda Ghost will certainly have a predictable share of haters, but it offered up a unique, stylish alternative to bikes like Ducati’s Monster. Powered by an air/oil-cooled, four-valve per cylinder 668cc parallel-twin with Weber-Marelli fuel injection that put a claimed 70hp through the six-speed gearbox, the bike was down on power a bit when…
A bit of a hulking dinosaur, even when new, this Laverda RGS 1000 lives at the transition point between the old and the new, as the European manufacturers were being eclipsed by the Japanese when it came to sports motorcycles. For a long time, they’d hung on by being able to out-handle the upstarts from…
1999 Laverda 750S on eBay The Laverda 750S was just like everything else the other manufacturers were making in the 90s… yet completely different at the same time. When you look at it, there are hints of Kawasaki’s ZX-7, Honda’s CBR900RR, Ducati’s 851/888 and even Suzuki’s RF series. It’s a mashup of styles that somehow…
Laverda was one of the unfortunate casualties of the Japanese onslaught of the 1970’s. Confronted by reliable, affordable multis from Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Honda, many Italian and British companies found themselves in dire straights, unable to compete in showrooms or on the street. And while many marques have seen short-term resurrections courtesy of…
This Laverda SFC is bit of a throwback to another era, when you really could buy a motorcycle, ride it to the track, rip off the lights, and actually compete at the professional level. Sure, there are classes today that require bikes to be largely stock, but this Laverda is really more like the equivalent…