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…
Wow, two Laverda 750 SFCs in one week, both with very serious pricing. Although, of the two, this one appears to be more original and is in much nicer, if less patina-d condition and appears to… what the hell, it’s decorating a New York City apartment?! Oh well, I guess if I had the money…
Back in the 1960s and 1970s you could buy race cars and race bikes that were basically road-legal, vehicles you could actually drive or ride to the track and reasonably expect to be competitive with pretty minimal changes. Of course, those days are long gone: race machines often share very few components with their road-going…
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Yamaha TZR250 3MA for sale, and the bike is both very rare and also a sportbike, so we’re posting this one, even though it isn’t in perfect condition. I’m a huge fan of this particular iteration of the TZR, because of course I’m a fan of the…
Update 5.11.2018: Based on his latest eBay listing, the 1989 is still available. Our original write up from November is shown below. Good luck to buyers and seller! -dc When RSBFS last listed this 1989 Kawasaki KR-1R on our pages, we considered it to be a bit of a world exclusive. That should tell you…
It’s a shame that the second incarnation of Laverda was gone by the end of the 1990s, before the recent interest in classic styles and older nameplates. I can imagine that a modern take on their big, burly triples would have gone over pretty well if they’d survived into the present. Apparently, a new triple…
They’re relatively rare here in the US, even in states with lax registration requirements, but late 80s and early 90s quarter-liter two-strokes were pretty widely available elsewhere in the sportbiking world, considering their narrowly-focused role and limited audience. Kawasaki was largely absent from the intense class rivalry during that period, though. Their earlier KR250 was…
With everything from two-stroke racers to sidecars in their century-long repertoire, state-owned MZ ( Motorenwerke Zschopau ) went private in 1990 and was sold to Malaysian investors in 1996. These were their salad days, with lots of new smaller-displacement models and their first original four-stroke engine for the MZ1000S. This ST variant has the S…