Today’s Yamaha TZR250R hails all the way from South Africa, although that shouldn’t surprise fans here in the US. The USA tragically never officially received any of these 250cc two-strokes that battled it out like tiny, raspy versions of the bikes that endlessly battled for sales in the 600cc and 750cc classes. Frames were trick,…
Today’s very clean Suzuki RG500Γ “Gamma” hails from power-mad Australia, where it seems like there are a disproportionate number of these two-stroke terrors stashed away. With fewer than 10,000 produced for all markets during three years of production, the bike was a true race-replica and shared its wild liquid-cooled square-four engine with no other model…
Most peoples’ basements are filled with boxes of moldering old magazines, holiday ornaments, clothes destined for Goodwill, and maybe the odd dry well for storing kidnapping victims, but at least one individual has a nice vintage Yamaha TA125 racebike hiding in theirs. A relatively inexpensive production racebike, the TA filled a gap in Yamaha’s racing…
In the middle of its ten model-year life, the RGV250 was nicely updated and a critical and popular success. The lightweight 250 was equipped like a superbike, and with the right rider could keep up with one. Though the two-stroke era had already ended here, grey market machines pop up occasionally and have almost a…
One of the shining stars of the two-stroke GP era, the hugely popular Kevin Schwantz and fellow American Wayne Rainey made headlines for their epic rivalry and “winner-take-all” on-track brawls. Although he actually raced an RGV500, a number of Suzuki’s road-going RGV250s were created with replica paintjobs to capitalize on Schwantz’ racing success riding with Lucky Strike…
Although small-displacement two-stroke sportbikes like this Honda NSR250R have been finding their way over to the US in shipping containers and across the border from Canada for a while now, they’re still relatively rare here and can be difficult to register for road use. This one is titled in Washington State, so that should help…
The Yamaha TZ125 was an evolution of the company’s TA125, a privateer GP machine in miniature. It might look like a glorified scooter but, although the TZ’s displacement was small, it came with sophisticated specification to match much bigger machines: liquid cooling, dry clutch, disc brakes, and a six-speed gearbox. The highly-strung engine made a…
This little smoker is freshly imported and titled. The seller states that it needs some elbow grease to get it to shine after years of sun exposure. With under 12k miles, the current winning bid is just $2,375. I doubt we’ll get to see the end of the auction but could be a great project…