The 1986 Yamaha RZV500R was the neighborhood knee dragger’s chance to ride the machine that carried Kenny Roberts to three world titles and helped Giacomo Agostini break MV Agusta’s ridiculous streak of 17 Grand Prix titles. It was billed as a 500cc GP machine with headlights and blinkers, though the similarities were actually pretty tenuous.…
For the Suzuki RGV250’s last few model years, Suzuki gave the popular machines a thorough redesign, with updated fairings and a brand-new 70-degree v-twin replacing the long serving 90-degree mill that helped make the bikes famous. In most trims, they were choked down to around 40 horsepower. But a limited number of Lucky Strike liveried…
Sold before we went to press, still worth a look – Donn Like buyers of a Gulfstream business jet refer to their Pratt & Whitney engine maintenance agreement that just happened to come with an airplane, the Yamaha RZ500 was built around their smashing V-4 two-stroke. This one has some miles but looks to be…
The entire class of 250cc two-stroke sportbikes has alwasy been forbidden fruit for US-based sportbike enthusiasts. The last real road-burning stroker was the RZ350, a bike that can certainly hang with much more modern machines and punch well above its weight, but the 18” wheels and bikini-fairing mark it out clearly as a bike from…
Racebikes are different than other bikes we feature on RSBFS. Where the goal for many collectible roadbikes is absolute originality, or at least limited, period-correct updates, the whole point of a racebike is that it’s a rough-and-tumble artifact, a bit of living history, and battle scars are okay. If the machine in question is historically…
Pity the US-based two-stroke fan. Few models were ever officially imported into the US, and those that did hit our shores only lasted for a couple of years. And while we should be happy we ever got them at all, vitally missing were the hard-edged smokers and the big bore machines. Casting eyes northward, we…
Of the plethora of loud, high-strung Japanese two strokes that have come of age to be street registered in this country over the last couple years, the Yamaha TZR250 tends to enjoy a reputation as one of the friendliest and sweet-handling bikes of the bunch. They don’t come with the same banshee wail as a…
Before we start and this gets out of hand, you *might* remember when you could buy one of these for $12. Or $1500. Or maybe even $10k. Those days are gone. The fact is this sub 10,000 mile RG500 Walter Wolf edition Gamma is on eBay for just a tad shy of $33,000. And while…