It’s always a wonderful morning when a quick perusal of “stuff for sale” nets a smoker looking for a good home. Makes me feel like I’m doing the world a real service, like finding foster homes for stray animals. In this case, the animal in question runs on premix and has the potential to scream…
Up for grabs today is a 2000 Aprilia RS250 – the most modern of the smokers we are likely to see on RSBFS these days. Sired by Aprilia during the dying days of 250cc GP racing, the RS250 is a street bike homage of the RSW250 GP racer. Using a Suzuki-derived twin based on the…
Suzuki has a long-standing relationship with the smaller Italian brands, providing their well-engineered powerplants to the likes of Bimota, Cagiva, and Aprilia. It makes sense: big companies may have excess production capacity, and it’s practical for smaller companies to purchase powerful, reliable, thoroughly-developed engines and transmissions and instead focus on frames and styling. In the…
Update 3.20.2017: Back on eBay after first being on RSBFS in August 2014 for $11k. Current bid is just under $7k reserve not met. Links updated. -dc I’ve always loved the look of the Aprilia RS 250, but I’m only a recent convert to the stink and rattle of two-strokes. Well, technically, I’m a hypothetical…
To the uninitiated, Honda’s alpha-numeric naming convention can get confusing, and it’d be easy to mistake this RS250R for something like a garden-variety NSR250R with a set of track-day fairings. But unlike the road-legal, race-replica NSR250R, the RS250R was a production race-bike, a Grand Prix machine in miniature. With the fairings removed, the elegant simplicity…
A mix of sleek styling and proven Japanese power, the Aprilia RS250 was the Italian company’s entry into the hotly-contested quarter-liter sportbike class battles and intended to take the fight to Honda’s NSR250, Yamaha’s TZR250, and Suzuki’s RGV250. The monochromatic style was a far cry from the vivid speedblock and tiger-stripe designs of the Japanese…
Aprilia took an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mentality” when motivating their RS250 two-stroke race replica, and packed Suzuki’s proven RGV250Γ “Gamma” engine and six-speed gearbox into their machine, albeit with extra tuning for a claimed 70hp. While that number may be theoretically possible, it seems pretty optimistic and might make for a short-lived…
Although for many, the second-generation Aprilia RS250 captures the essence of lightweight, two-stroke performance, I prefer the earlier versions, like this Chesterfield replica: the later bikes are just a little bit bulbous in the tail, and that techno-futuristic dash just look a little bit too “1980s Dodge Daytona” for me. Not that I’d pass up…