These days you can enter a BMW or Ducati dealership and without pledging your house against your new sport bike, ride out with a close to 200 hp missile. If you entered a Japanese OEM dealership you will be near these figures as well. But in the real world, made of commuting on public roads and at best, a weekend blast along your favorite canyon, will you ever get close to, let’s say, 80% of your new sport bike potential ? If you’re not called Hayden or Lorenzo, probably not. In addition, is it more fun to ride a high tech bike knowing that you are actually just scrapping the surface, or take a less evolved machine close to its edge ? I personally had more fun riding a Ducati 748 R than my last attempt on modern bikes like the BMW S1000RR. Don’t get me wrong, the Beemer is a fantastic machine but too often I found myself looking up the sky when gearing in 3rd at 100mph. Do that on your way home from work and you’ll end up without a license for a few months (any reference to actual persons or myself is purely accidental). What you want, is something that involves your senses and won’t kill you or, get you in jail. A small capacity two stroker (RGV 250 or RS250) is a good example of a pure sport bike that you can, or better must, ride “like you stole it”. In the four strokes world, you’d be looking to a 400cc 4 cylinder, like this classic and affordable Kawasaki ZXR currently available on eBay in Germany.
Try it on a twisty road, don’t change gear before you hit 13000 rpm, brake hard, shift down and accelerate again…now was that involving enough ?
With only a day left and a current bid of 1500 EUR, you might be able to get the deal of 2013.
he bike had only one owner, registered for the first time in 2001, it has an after market exhaust and a couple of “normal usage” marks on its body. Let’s read what the seller says (translated with Google):
Hello ebay friends
Offered with 65 HP Kawasaki ZXR400 firsthand.
Remus Viper exhaust (with Approval) + pillion seat cover.
The machine had little fall –
Scratches on the frame slider, pulpit and the exhaust plus a small crack under the lights.
The machine is clean and reliable.
At the moment the machine off the road.New TÜV (German official vehicle revision test) !
If interested click on the link below to find more about it:
Claudio
I remember seeing one of these for the first time while in London when I was about 15. I wanted it so bad. The perfect displacement for a first bike. High reving, decent power, excellent chassis. So cool both in terms of looks and what it could do. Then I came back to the US, and loathed the 250’s we had.
I raced one of these on the Isle of Man several times, won my only bronze replica with one in 2000. Wasn’t particularly fond of the paint scheme, but they were fun to ride and wish I could have kept mine.
Wish this bike was near me and would buy it, reminds me of a KR-1 250