The Laverda SFC 1000 would be the final hurrah for the mighty Laverda triple, an advanced engine design that had been in production for 15 years by the mid-80s, valiantly keeping the Italian marque up to pace with the well-funded Japanese superbikes of the era. Laverda first started life back in 1873 when Pietro Laverda…
Before I start, let me just say that the Norton P11 is one of my own personal favourite motorcycles of all time. This means that whenever I write about one that’s for sale or coming up for auction, I have to fight the urge to pull out my own wallet – despite the fact that…
When the Ducati Paul Smart 1000 LE was released in 2006 it caused a sensation throughout the motorcycle world. It was unquestionably one of the most beautiful motorcycles of its age, and it still today stands as a high water mark when it comes to modern classic motorcycles. Ducati built the Paul Smart 1000 LE…
This collection of three custom motorcycles were all hand-built by pioneering British street artist D*Face, aka Dean Stockton. The work of D*Face is celebrated alongside other modern street art luminaries like Banksy, Shepard Fairey, JR, Swoon, and Invader. In a way, these modern artists share many parallels with the leading lights of the impressionist movement,…
This is an original Honda CB750 Sandcast, it’s called a “sandcast” because it was built in the first year or production when sand-casting was still being used to cast the crankcases. Honda quickly released that the demand for their new “big” motorcycle was so strong that sand-casting wouldn’t be feasible if they wanted to capitalize…
The Bimota YB8 is a rare early-90s Italian-Japanese superbike with scalpel sharp handling and gobs of reliable power from its four-cylinder, 149bhp, 1002cc engine sourced from the Yamaha FZR1000 EXUP. Those of you with a passion for classic superbikes will already know all about Bimota, but for those who haven’t yet encountered a bike from…
The Harley-Davidson VR1000 was a race bike developed in the late-1980s and early-1990s to take on the best in the world. We don’t typically associate the American motorcycle maker with performance machines, but the VR1000 was an exception to this – with a 996cc 60º, liquid-cooled V-twin, quad cams (double overhead per cylinder), four valves per…
The Honda ATC 250R is remembered today as one of the leading lights of the three-wheeled craze that swept the motorcycle world in the 1970s and 1980s. Ultimately these three-wheelers would be replaced with quad bikes due to safety concerns, many amateur riders were injured and some where killed when they flipped their three-wheelers, this…
The Honda Monkey Baja Africa is one of the rarest and most desirable iterations of the beloved Japanese minibike ever offered, although interestingly it was never actually built by the Honda factory. The Africa version of the Monkey bike was a kit made by Honda that you could buy and bolt on to your Baja…
This article was written by Death Machines of London founder James Hilton, the man who built the bike you see here before you. When possible we like to bring the story of a vehicle to you in the words of the person or people who built it, to give you direct insight into their thought…
The BMW R100GS was released in 1987 as the next iteration in the GS family after the original and much loved R80G/S, a motorcycle that almost single-handedly launched the modern dual sport category. The pressure on the engineers at BMW to follow up the R80G/S with a new model was intense. The multiple Paris Dakar…
The Honda VF1000R was the high performance member of the Honda VF1000 model family. All models had an advanced V4 998cc double overhead cam 16-valve, liquid-cooled engine but the VF1000R had a series of modifications to boost power and bring the bike closer to the Honda FWS1000 race bike which was competing in the Daytona…
