The Yamaha RZ500 promised GP-bike glory for the every man when it hit the scene in ’84, with a quartet of exhaust pipes poking out at odd angles producing a biblical scream. By ’85, Suzuki had rained on the parade a little with the RG500, which was lighter, more powerful and a few notches crazier,…
12.13.2017: Bob has decided to upgrade to a Featured Listing after we first posted this bike on November 30th. Links updated to latest auction. Good luck to buyers and seller! -dc When Yamaha and Suzuki dropped their 500cc two-stroke race replicas in the middle of the 1980s, the bikes effectively stopped the oil-burning horsepower wars…
Update 12.12.2017: Seller confirms this bike has sold. Congratulation to the new owner! -dc Kawasaki pushed out more than 17,000 Z1-Rs over the model’s three-year life, but the majority were built in ’78 and ’79, and the vast majority of those wore Stardust Silver paintjobs. Today’s featured bike bucks both those trends: It is a…
Things were coming up Max Biaggi in 1996, as the Roman was in the middle of a string of three 250cc Grand Prix world titles and his storied rivalry with Valentino Rossi was still nearly half a decade in the future. The Italian claimed his trophies aboard Aprilia’s fantastic RS250GP, so the factory threw some…
Update 11.27.2017: SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc Our buddy Greg at Deftone Cycles has a near-constant stream of gorgeous grey-market bikes come through his doors every year, from fairly standard JDM imports in excellent condition to some real unobtanium pieces that you have to be fast to catch. It’s no surprise, then, that…
1989 Yamaha FZR750RR OW01 for sale on eBay The Yamaha OW01, also known as the FZR750RR, is a unicorn in any condition, with just 500 bikes spread over a three model-year run. They were more exclusive, marginally more powerful, and a big chunk more expensive than Honda’s genre-defining RC30. 1989 Yamaha FZR750RR OW01 for sale…
There were a lot of things that led to the Bimota V-Due’s inauspicious fall from grace, mostly related to costs and hype that would ultimately spell disappointment when the bike finally broke cover. But by far the bike’s worst flaw was its positively heinous fuel injection system, which was designed to keep the bike in…
The early ’80s were a great time to be an enormous Japanese superbike, as Wes Cooley, Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer and Eddie Lawson were busy catapulting your fortunes into the stratosphere. The Kawasaki KZ series in particular was enjoying the fruits of Lawson’s labor, as the flat tracker from Upland, California won the AMA Superbike…