25 Years Ago November 1984
25 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 1984
The world was a much bigger place back in ’84, as was made evident by this month’s “We Ride 7 Secret Bikes of Japan” cover story. There aren’t too many “secret” bikes anymore! As a motorcycle-crazy kid without a driver’s license, I read with awe and wonder about the not-for-theU.S. Yamaha RZV500R, Honda CBR400F and Suzuki GSX-R400, as well as several trick 250s.
•Accompanying the cover story was “Beyond Pit Road,” a story by Executive Editor Ken Vreeke that offered an exclusive look inside Honda Racing Corporation, formed in 1982. Vreeke and Tech Editor Steve Anderson saw turbocharged NR250 racers, oval pistons from the fabled NR500 Grand Prix four-stroke and “a number of dyno rooms that were dark but still warm from the recent running of...something.”
•Roundup featured stories about Harley-Davidson’s then newly designed Nova V-Four (“The $15 million motorcycle”) and the difficulty in further financing its development, an item on Honda’s 25th anniversary of doing business in the U.S. (“A quarter-century of meeting the nicest people”) and a piece on the then-new National Motorcycle Museum in England (“Home for the aged”).
• Roost went flying as Test Editor Ron Griewe compared three ver sions of the two-stroke Yamaha ii •~iui~iuu~ YZ250. "Ever wonder how a factory-modified YZ250 works bike stacks up against a stock er and a sup port-ride YZ?
So did we.” Ultimately, testers decided that, for the money, the best option was the stock bike with the factory machine’s Öhlins shock that “worked like magic.”
Mark Hoyer
