Hot Rod Italian: 1983 Laverda Jota for Sale

By 1983, Laverda was on a slow, downward slide as the company made incremental improvements to their charismatic, but outdated machines to keep them marginally relevant: by that point, the Japanese offered bikes with handling, power, and reliability, all at a significantly lower cost. They couldn’t match Italian bikes like the Laverda Jota for style,…

Throwback Thursday: 1983 Laverda RGS1000 for Sale

While many of the 80s bikes we’ve featured recently look relentlessly forward, spending their lives on the bleeding-edge of sportbike design, other manufacturers were necessarily stuck in the past, limited by budgets and working to maximize the potential of existing, sometimes moribund designs like today’s Laverda RGS1000. Laverda had certainly earned its fair share of…

Some Assembly Required: 1986 Honda NS400R

Honda’s NSR400R was a snarling, two-stroke middleweight from an era of unprecedented experimentation; a three-cylinder, triple-piped sportbike with cutting-edge specifications. The 1980’s must have been a very discouraging time for European and Italian manufacturers. While they were barely hanging on by their fingernails, Japanese manufacturers were in the throes of an era of funky, experimental…

Two-Stroke Triple: 1985 Honda NS400R for Sale

This Honda NSR400R was up for sale recently, but did not find a buyer. Hopefully, it will sell this time around! After years of relatively conservative technology, where overhead cams were considered pretty cutting-edge, motorcycle design went into overdrive during the 1980’s and the Japanese, fueled by their 1970’s domination of the market, were at…