Many of the Yamaha-powered Bimotas like today’s YB8 look suspiciously similar, and while I’m sure there are physical differences in the frames and fairings, I’d also bet that many parts are interchangeable between them. The YB8 used an updated YB6 frame, along with Yamaha’s 1002cc, five-valve inline-four and EXUP exhaust system from the FZR1000. During…
Update 3.11.2019: This bike has SOLD! Congratulations to buyer and seller! -dc For the money, 1990s Bimotas offer some pretty incredible bang for your buck. Obviously, a more modern machine of equal value will be faster, as well as more reliable and practical, but if the goal is to own something different, something exotic, and…
I’ve mentioned this before, but everything just sounds cooler in Italian. If you want to intimidate someone, just shout gibberish at them in German: anything you say sounds clipped and military and very, very serious. But yell at someone in Italian, and it just sounds like you’re trying to very emphatically seduce them. I mean,…
It’s fitting that the last couple of Bimota YB4s we’ve featured have been race bikes, since the YB4 was a competition machine first, and a road bike second. In fact, only a racing version was built at first, until World Superbike homologation rules required 200 roadgoing examples be built. The YB4 competed head-to-head with the…
By the end of the 1990s, it could be argued that Bimota was basically irrelevant. After all, the whole point of a Bimota was simple: take a powerful, reliable engine from a bike from an established manufacturer, then slip it into a stiff, lightweight frame with the best suspension money could buy at both ends,…
Although it’s often the slinky bodywork that people remember about Bimotas, the frames are what really define them. The Bimota YB4 was designed around Bimota’s signature and unmistakable beam frame they used throughout the late 80s and 90s. No soft, moulded contours here: the spars look like girders that were extruded by some giant, industrial device, then cut and welded…
Only rarely seen outside Japan, the market for which it was exclusively designed, the Bimota YB7 is like a 3/4 scale YB4. The bike is based around the FZR400 powerplant, so it’s obviously no real powerhouse, with a claimed 65hp from the 399cc liquid-cooled four. But that just means you get a sweet-handling, four-cylinder exotic…
A collector and friend of RSBFS is thinning the herd and offering the following fantastic homologation specials for sale {please kneel}: Get the goods on each bike below: 1992 Ducati 851 with Less Than 2000 Miles! Update 8.9.2010: SOLD! Comments from the seller: All original -except for the addition of the booming Gi.Co.Moto twin pipes…