Developed to capitalize on a 500cc GP championship, the RZ500 promised the world and then delivered. For all its street equipment, it was a close to a Grand Prix machine as a generation would get. Thanks to careful updates and maintenance, a new generation might now experience this 500cc machine with liter-bike power. 1985 RZ500…
Not winding down during its last year of production, the 999R for 2006 was an update, if somewhat cosmetic, from the the previous years. And the design that brought Ducati three World SuperBike Championships would have to serve for the 2007 season while rulesmakers fiddled. In the livery ridden by Troy Bayliss on the way…
Update 2.2.2017: Seller has confirmed the eBay sale of $17,665. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Eddie Lawson rode the factory’s Z1000R to the AMA Superbike Championships in 1981 and 1982. And though he got a better offer from Yamaha in 1983, Kawasaki continued for another year with the replica KZ1000R. With total production under…
The fact that it’s offered by a SoCal preparation shop specializing in Suzuki might be a reminder that the Aprilia RS250 used the 249cc two-stroke twin from the RGV250. As enhanced by Aprilia’s intake, top end, and exhaust, the RS250 had power that put 4-strokes with triple the displacement to shame. This first-year race…
This Japanese-market Yamaha RZV500R is a bit of a double-edged sword: one one hand, the bike came with a lightweight aluminum frame instead of the steel frame found on bikes destined for other markets. But, on the other hand, power output was restricted, down from 88hp to 64. From a pure performance perspective, the ideal…
Like any market, collector car and bike values can be difficult to predict, which is why they call it “speculating.” Sure, that Anniversary Edition Corvette looks pretty sharp in a giant, plastic wedge kind of way, but will it ever be valuable enough to really justify squirreling away one instead of driving it? The same…
As is always the case with exotic machinery, a simple truth-in-advertising name sounds so much better in Italian… Oooooh. A Maserati Quattroporte… That sounds so sexy. Wait, it just means “four doors”? You’re saying that the name of that four-door Maserati is “Maserati four-door”? The same thing is true for Ducati’s GP6-based Desmosedici D16RR road…
In the first year of a varied run that lasted until 1996, the Honda NS250R was a race replica 2-stroke that was related to a caped crusader over at Honda Racing Corp. Capitalizing each year on developments made to the 250 Grand Prix racer, the NS250R improved each year and was presented in many different…