The entire class of 250cc two-stroke sportbikes has alwasy been forbidden fruit for US-based sportbike enthusiasts. The last real road-burning stroker was the RZ350, a bike that can certainly hang with much more modern machines and punch well above its weight, but the 18” wheels and bikini-fairing mark it out clearly as a bike from…
We tend to think (often and fondly) of Laverda building big bikes. With triples. The Jota, the RGS and the Mirage, for example. But before those, Laverda created smaller bikes too, such as the 500cc parallel twin. And in the hit-and-miss world of European bikes in the 1970s, the Laverda 500 – while extremely competent…
As Laverda rose from the ashes of the 1970s, they saw Ducati as a natural rival, inspiration, and target. Yes, I know that Laverda continued to produce new motorcycles into the 1980s, but those were just 1970s engines wrapped in new clothes, a pattern that would continue when the company was reborn in the 1990s……
If you are a regular reader of RSBFS (if not, sign up for our email service so you never miss out on a great find), you will know two things: Number one, the RZ350 is a very popular model of semi-rarity her in the United States; and number two, sellers have been classifying “reasonably good”…
Update 12.12.2018: The seller has notified us that this bike has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Sort of an homologation special for a company that wasn’t planning to actually go racing, the Laverda 750S Formula used premium components to upgrade the company’s existing fully-faired sportbike. After falling on hard times in the 1980s,…
Mid-seventies the two-stroke era was winding down, most manufacturers were looking for ways to tie their new mid-size four strokes to their smoking forebears. Yamaha stretched it out, keeping the RD-400 in the line-up until 1980. For 1977 they offered cast wheels, all disk brakes and 14-second 1/4 miles. 1977 Yamaha RD400 for sale on…
Clean, low-mileage examples of the MZ 1000S pop up for sale from time to time and, since most were silver, I always have to dig back through our archives to see if it’s one we’ve featured recently. Also, I get the feeling they’re hard to shift and the same listings seem to pop up again…
Update 8.28.2018: This bike has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Although two-stroke sportbike production continued well into the 1990s in much of the world, here in the US the Yamaha RZ350 was pretty much the end of the line. Blame stricter emissions laws and progressively bigger and faster four-strokes in a country with…