This Japanese-market Yamaha RZV500R is a bit of a double-edged sword: one one hand, the bike came with a lightweight aluminum frame instead of the steel frame found on bikes destined for other markets. But, on the other hand, power output was restricted, down from 88hp to 64. From a pure performance perspective, the ideal…
The popular conception of homologation specials is one of thinly-veiled racebikes, competition bodywork with a couple holes cut in it for headlights, close-ratio gearboxes, and racebike power just a remap/rejet away. The reality is sometimes far less exciting. Sure, the Honda VF1000R may look like an endurance-racing bike with lights, but at a portly 600lbs…
Many of the weird and wonderful bikes we like to feature on this site appear in time-capsule condition, as if Doc Brown put them in a trailer behind his time-traveling DeLorean and towed them from the distant year 1985 into… The future! Others are patched-up wrecks described as having “patina” with “90% tread left on…
Update 8.1.2016: The seller has notified us that this bike has sold. Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc V4-powered sports motorcycles are all the rage now, but they were long associated with just one manufacturer: Honda. Their homologation RC30 set the standard for “exotic” in the late 1980s and 1990s: V4, gear-driven cams, single-sided swingarms…
Like any market, collector car and bike values can be difficult to predict, which is why they call it “speculating.” Sure, that Anniversary Edition Corvette looks pretty sharp in a giant, plastic wedge kind of way, but will it ever be valuable enough to really justify squirreling away one instead of driving it? The same…
As is always the case with exotic machinery, a simple truth-in-advertising name sounds so much better in Italian… Oooooh. A Maserati Quattroporte… That sounds so sexy. Wait, it just means “four doors”? You’re saying that the name of that four-door Maserati is “Maserati four-door”? The same thing is true for Ducati’s GP6-based Desmosedici D16RR road…
Honda’s V-Four development team found a sweet combination of chassis specifications in the mid-eighties, and the resulting VF500F was a legendary handler. As nicely as the carburetted double overhead cam engine ran up its 70 horses, the air-assisted dampers at both ends of the Interceptor soaked up the realities of the road and allowed the…
Not long before the flights of 600cc sportbikes started pounding these shores, Honda started a handling-centric mini-frenzy with the mid-80’s Interceptors. They were light(er) in weight and had 4-valve V-4’s, with small frame-mounted fairings and little belly scoops. Serial number 18 and possibly the first delivered to the U.S., this VF-500 has been cared for and thoughtfully photographed.…