Look, I’d really buy this Ducati Sport 1000SE just for the insanely cool 2-into-2 high/low Zard exhaust and get a pretty nice bike thrown in for free. Because if I had the money and space to collect a bunch of bikes, the Sport 1000 would be on the list, and I’d want one with this…
Bimota made their name building lean, spare, race-oriented bikes with only the barest nods to streetability. So the DB3 Mantra was a bit of a left-turn for them, as it was purely meant to be a road bike and had no track pretensions. Unfortunately, released from the requirement to make the bike aerodynamic for speed…
It was clear that Ducati had a lock on the “sexy v-twin” market in the mid-90s, selling basically every 916 they could make at a very premium price. But, aside from the funky, springless valves, they weren’t really offering anything all that innovative, and Suzuki figured they could do something much better for cheaper. And…
At some point, you may get to thinking, “These modern sport bikes are going to kill me.” It’s a pretty logical conclusion. It’s bad enough we have to dodge car drivers on cell phones, off-leash dogs, deer, moose, apparently coyotes… We have to watch out for road debris, sand, rocks, wet leaves, and sometimes discarded…
Bike’s like Aprilia’s high-strung RS250 two-stroke is really this website’s raison d’être: specifications that speak to an almost single-minded pursuit of speed, race-bred bodywork, rarity, and an exotic nameplate. The icing on the cake is that the RS250 is relatively attainable, if you are willing to accept the compromises inherent in such a focused design.…
Long forgotten in the wake of the 916, the Ducati 851 and 888 have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, likely because they are seen as the genesis of Ducati’s four-valve, liquid-cooled v-twin superbikes that may have reached its apex with the Panigale: Ducati is struggling in WSBK and there is talk of…
I saw this, and my jaw dropped. But before I gush over this bike, I’ll admit: it’s difficult to understand this extremely rare and extremely expensive Ducati/NCR New Blue without a bit of history about Old Blue. In the early 1970’s, a couple of Cycle World editors were racing one of only a handful of…
Built between 1986 and 1996, the Yamaha TZR250 came in a variety of forms, from the original liquid-cooled, parallel-twin “2MA” to the “3MA” that came along in 89-90 and featured an interesting “reversed” cylinder design that had the carburetors mounted on the front of the engine, exhausts running directly out the back to through the…