The sad thing about being a serious motorcycle geek is that most people don’t really understand my obsession with and enthusiasm for weird motorcycles. Even other motorcyclists. I was thinking about this today as I was poring over the engine of a friend’s Velocette Venom, trying to suss out the function of the little cable-actuated…
If you’re looking for a track bike, your best bet is something as modern as possible, with broad parts availability. A reliable tool for going fast as effortlessly as possible. Something completely disposable. There’s a reason you see a ton of GSX-R600s and 1000s, R6s, the occasional SV650, even a new crop of Ninja 400…
Ducati’s air-cooled 750SS might seem like an unlikely candidate for a racebike build. By 1993, a two-valve Desmo twin was antiquated technology, a quirky, charming curio by the sportbike standards of the day. But although competition duties had been handed off to the liquid-cooled, four-valve superbikes by the early 90s, it’s important to remember that…
Today’s Honda RS125RW might be a bit obscure for most of our readers, and is certainly older than the bikes we usually feature here, but a genuine Honda Grand Prix machine is certainly worth a look whenever one comes up for sale! This one has plenty of patina, period stickers, and an apparently rare dry…
I love seeing race and trackday bikes built out of unlikely candidates like this well-prepared, race-winning Triumph Daytona T595. After all, the whole point of the Daytona in the first place was that it wasn’t pretending to be just a numberplate away from placing at Brands Hatch. Instead, it was intended as a fast roadbike,…
Harley-Davidson introduced the XR-750 in 1969 in response to an AMA rule change that made their flat head racers finally obsolete. The 1972 revision had an updated engine design and went on to an unmatched series of flat track wins and stadium jumps. This example is fitted with the optional rear brake and a tuneable…
By 2001, the entire quarter-liter sportbike class was basically dead, leaving the Aprilia RS250 Cup a bit of an orphan. Yamaha TZR250 production ended in 1995, Honda’s NSR250R in 1996, and the Suzuki RGV250Γ held out until 1998. But I guess Aprilia still had some of the older 90° RGV250 engines lying around, so they…
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…