Discontinued Motorcycles We Miss The Most

Why We Picked It:

When you think about the history of sportbikes, it is quite a shock to realize that the modern interpretation of what that means only really started appearing in the mid-1980s. Before that, sport models were generally standard bikes with bigger engines for more power, with little consideration for aerodynamic fairings, a front cowl, and the like.

In the late 1980s, Honda was entering the World Superbike Championship, and formed the now legendary Honda Racing Corporation. They developed a superb supersport bike, the RC24 R, that would go on to challenge for victories throughout the mid-1980s, but as part of the regulations for the race versions of bikes starting in 1987, 3,000 road going homologation models needed to be made. Thus was born the first ever Honda homologation special edition, the VFR750R, much better known as the RC30.

It was a masterpiece of engineering, with a 748cc 90 degree, liquid cooled, dual overhead cam V4 that absolutely howled as it climbed through the rev range to its 12,500 RPM redline. No expense was spared for any of the running gear, either, as it had a single-sided swingarm by ELF from France, had Showa suspension front and back, dual 300mm front disc brakes with quick-release pads for changes during endurance races, a castellated-nut-and-cotter-pin quick change rear axle for racing pit stops... it was literally a race bike for the road.

It was released in 1987 in Japan, then in Europe in 1988, and finally in the USA in 1990. At the time, it commanded a $15,000 price, which is about $34,000 in 2023, but with all the road-racer specials from companies like Ducati, Kawasaki, and the like these days, a V4 powered Honda supersport would not go amiss

Why We Picked It:

There is just something about Italians, in that they have an innate understanding of style. Long, flowing lines that form organic curves. Proportions and angles that are just right. A balance of vibrant, deep racing red contrasted with little touches of pure white. Even the way they bend metal to form exhaust pipes is an act of sculpture. One bike, however, had all of those things above, and more, in perfect harmony, the Ducati 916.

The story of how the bike came to be is far too complex to relay here in a few paragraphs, but it consists of typical Italian stubbornness regarding design, a pair of brilliant engineers at the Cagiva Research Center that found a way to increase the power and displacement of the Ducati 888 engine, and some ingenuity in trellis frame design. The result was a 916cc 90 degree V-twin, the Desmodromic, putting out 114 HP, 67 lbs-ft of torque, and draped in a frame and body that made jaws scrape the floor.

The single-sided swingarm was masterfully machined, with the twin exhaust pipes from the engine flowing up under the frame and ending tucked tight and high under the rear of the bike. The main frame spar, from the handlebars to the top of the engine, was tastefully left exposed, with one of the most beautiful faring designs of all time covering the engine and front of the bike. The tank was long and low, the seat angled forward, the pegs high and back in a racing position. Anyone that saw it, or more rarely had a chance to ride it, fell in love with the Ducati 916.

The model was discontinued in 1998, and while Ducati's of the modern era are still quite nice to look at, there was just that something about the 916, in a simply but elegant Italian way, that makes us wish a modern version of it existed.

Why We Picked It:

Yamaha has a knack for making bonkers bikes. They made the VMAX, a cruiser designed to be the fastest accelerating cruiser of all time. They made the Niken, a three wheeler pretending to be a two wheeler. They made the TDR250 Ultimate Dual, a dual sport bike at a time when no one even knew what a dual sport was.

Taking the 249cc two stroke parallel twin engine from the TZR250 sportbike, Yamaha crafted a bike that wasn't a road bike, wasn't a trail bike, had hints of being an ADV, but really wasn't an ADV at all. The closest thing it could equate to in modern terms is a supermoto, but was made way before supermotos became a thing,

What it was was hilarious. It had a sportbike engine that revved to 10k RPM like a lunatic, in a narrow and tall frame designed for the narrow roads of Japan and Europe. It was made even narrower by having the exhausts come up and under the rear seat. That engine was also low and forward, instead of at the center of mass, so it was very happy to flick side to side and be an agile little bike.

It sold... poorly. No one knew what to do with it. If you wanted a road bike, you bought a road bike. If you wanted an ADV, you bought a Honda or a BMW ADV. If you wanted a dirt or trail bike, you bought one of those. What the TDR250 did, which was bonkers at the time, was bring all three of those riding styles together. An off-road capable, on-road sport touring ADV.

Now, we know that two-strokes are pretty much banned from any and every road in the world unless it's a bike that's registered as a classic, but what we wouldn't give to have a proper, smelly, oil-burning two stroke dual sport/ADV again!

Why We Picked It:

While the V-Rod as a model lasted from 2002 all the way to 2017, it is the very first iteration, the VRSCA, that is often the most fondly thought of and remembered. It was a muscle cruiser that truly defined the term, as not only was it styled to look mean and dangerous, it had an engine that was designed in collaboration with Porsche.

Working from the base of an Evolution V-twin, Porsche managed to bring the displacement down from 80 ci to 69 ci, made it twin cam, and somehow, someway, made it produce an astounding 115 HP and 84 lbs-ft of torque. When it was slotted into the frame of the V-Rod, a bike designed around the massive power output, the result was almost literally a drag bike from the factory.

The main reason that the VRSCA V-Rod is remembered, however, is that it had a literally flat torque curve. From idle all the way up to its 9,000 RPM redline, no matter where you were in that range, in whatever gear, with twisting your right wrist you were instantly catapulted down the road.

Other features of the V-Rod was that it was primarily water cooled, with the water pump being driven off an intermediate shaft between the cylinders, as well as it having automatically adjusting hydraulic tensioners for the chains driving the four camshafts. That last feature was a direct result of the cooperation with Porsche, as that technology was developed for the Porsche Boxter's flat four engine.

While later models upped the displacement and power, when the VRSCA V-Rod hit the streets in 2002, no one knew what hit them. It dominated drag racing meets, it could break the speed limit in first gear, and it went like a bat out of hell.

Why We Picked It:

MV Agusta is to the the motorcycle world what companies like Ferrari and Lamborghini are to the car world, meaning that their bikes are things that almost any rider would love to swing a leg over, but they are so expensive and rare that it is more of a pipe dream than a possible reality. While the F4 was produced until 2018 with a 1,000cc engine, it was the original 5 years of production, the F4 750s, that are the ones missed far more.

The biggest claim to fame about the 749cc inline four that sat at the heart of the bike is that it was derived from a 1992 Ferrari F1 engine, with Ferrari engineers helping at the beginning. Because of this, the MV Agusta F4 is the only bike in recent memory that featured hemispherical cylinder heads and a radial valve layout. As one can imagine, being derived from an F1 engine, the bike sounded insanely good.

The very first bikes, the F4 750 Serie Oro (Gold Series) was extremely limited. No expense was spared, and exotic materials were used, with the fairings, seat cover, front guard, air box, even the fuel tank being made of carbon fiber. Specially produced Showa forks for the bike had fast detach axle clamps, and the brakes were custom made by Nissin, with six-piston front calipers and four-piston rears. The production edition, the F4 750S, kept the forks and brakes, but the fairings were made of ABS and the single sided swingarm was made of cast aluminum instead of magnesium.

Still considered one of the most beautiful sportbikes ever made, the MV Agusta F4, in its original 750cc form, is something we would love to see make a comeback.

Why We Picked It:

Honda has had a lot of success in MotoGP, and the Honda Racing Team (HRC) is one of the best in the paddock. However, Honda also races in the World Superbike Championship (World SBK), a series where the bikes must have a homologation road model and be mostly based on that road model. That requirement is why the Honda CBR1000RR-R Fireblade SP was released, and why the Honda RC51, one of the few sportbikes Honda released with a V-twin, was made for 6 years in the early part of the century.

What makes things even better is that entire reason that Honda went with a V2 instead of an inline-four was to refute the claim by Ducati that they were the only ones able to extract maximum performance from a 90 degree V-twin. From 999cc's, Honda pulled 133 HP and 71.4 lbs ft of torque for the road going version, and in its maiden year of 2000, the Castrol Honda team won the World SBK title with rider Colin Edwards.

The homologation special road bike was almost entirely a race bike, except for a few internal bits of the engine, the addition of mirrors and a license plate holder, and tuning the engine to run on 91 octane pump gas. The frame, fairings, handlebars, even the swingarm were the same as on the race bike. It was rather heavy, at 480 lbs wet (460 for the race version), but it would still go 265 KPH (164 MPH) down the front straight of any race track.

Honda stopped factory support of World SBK in 2003, but some teams kept buying and racing the RC51, and as such the homologation specials still needed to roll out. The plug was pulled in 2006, and Honda has not released a V-twin powered superbike since... and we think it's time they did!

Why We Picked It:

Okay, we admit it, this one was discontinued and almost immediately replaced by the BMW R1250 GS, but we just had to put it on here because of two very specific riders and one epic adventure. We are, of course, talking about Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman and Long Way Round.

While they used the R1150 GS Adventure model, the "normal" R1150 GS was a much beloved touring bike in both the UK and continental Europe. It was immensely comfortable, could chug along in fine style all day long, and was easily able to carry two-up, with full pannier lockers. In fact, when it was reviewed in 2000, it was voted the best sport touring bike by Cycle World Magazine, and won tons of "touring bike of the year" awards.

The R1150 GS was known for its near invincibility. It could be bashed, crashed, bent, bruised, almost everything except tossed off the side of a cliff, and with a hammer, some curse words, and maybe a few spares here and there, would just keep going. This gained it a ton of fame, as the R1150 GS was used for two Guiness world records, for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth in 2002, and the fastest traversal of the Pan American Highway, from Quellon, Chile to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 2003.

Seeing as BMW were the ones that started the whole adventure touring motorcycle hobby, we guess it's only fitting that one of their best bikes of all time is the legend it is. As we said, you can get a modern version in the RS1250 GS, but in this case, the original is still the king.

Why We Picked It:

A sportbike, supersport, or superbike crossing the 150 MPH barrier is one of those "well, duh" type of things. A cruiser that is not a dedicated drag bike, on the other hand, is something that you would not expect to be able to go faster than 150 MPH, but that is exactly what the Yamaha VMAX was designed and built to do.

The VMAX also has the distinctions of being one of the very few cruisers to be powered by a 1,679cc V4, and a very high tech one at that. Using Yamaha Chip Controlled Intake (YCC-I) and Yamaha Chip Controlled Throttle (YCC-T), it was a fully ride-by-wire system from the outset, constantly adjusting the intake plenum lengths to optimize torque and power delivery. It also had access to a ton of cold air through its 2x2 snorkels, one set on either side of the fuel tank, each snorkel dedicated to a single cylinder. This meant that you could twist on some power in any gear, at any revs, and the bike just responded.

The VMAX's biggest claim to fame is its acceleration, as it will embarrass several supercars and superbikes by absolutely catapulting to 60 MPH in 2.5 seconds, and will keep going on to rev limited 155 MPH at the top end. With a sixth gear, it could probably hit 175 to 180 MPH, but alas, it only came with five. That is faster than even the insane Triumph Rocket 3 R.

It also had one of the best cruiser names, as in physics, Vmax is the maximum potential velocity of an object. It is still possible to get a VMAX through the used market in very good condition, just be prepared to hold on for dear life when you twist the wrist!

Why We Picked It:

It is a debate that is as old as the millennium: If you want a supersport bike, do you go with the Suzuki GSX-R600R, or the Yamaha YZF-R6? Many chose the R6, and with good reason. Throughout much of the mid 2000s and 2010s, a young Italian rider by the name of Valentino Rossi was dominating in MotoGP, and Yamaha seized on that marketing opportunity by bringing a lot of the development and tech of the YZR-M1 to the YZF-R1 and YZF-R6.

Part of that tech was the ever increasing redline, starting at 15,000 RPM in 1999, and ending with the 2020 R6 needle able to spin around to 17,500 (although it would go to 18,000 before it hit the limiter, because of how fast the engine revved). Another part was that it was one of the first supersports to implement ride-by-wire, where the onboard computer would figure out the optimal air-fuel mix for the best power depending on amount of wrist and a bunch of sensors updating it hundreds of times a second.

Probably the biggest reason that it was the bike of choice was that it had, and still has, simply the largest third-party aftermarket catalogue in existence. You can find everything from fork seals to engine turbo kits, hundreds of exhausts, even race grade parts to turn an R6 from a street rocket to a track monster. The best part? All of the parts were, and are, immensely affordable, so seeing a fully stock YZF-R6 these days is rarity.

This is one bike that already has a replacement, the R7, but could not continue on into the 2020s as it was unable to meet emissions targets and, sadly, will not be ressurrected.

Why We Picked It:

Husqvarna Motorcycles had an interesting time between 2007 and 2013, when they were owned by BMW Motorrad. Multiple models of bikes were designed, announced, not made, reworked, then announced again and then made. The Nuda was one of those bikes, originally designed as a pure supermoto of one of Husqvarna's motocross models, before it was decided to make this a very special supermoto.

Most supermotos are narrow, uncomfortable things that are designed solely to be fast, fun street versions of successful dirt and trail bikes. The Nuda 900, on the other hand, was designed to be its own supermoto that did things just a little bit differently than everyone else, something that is still a trait of Husqvarna today. It borrowed the engine from a BMW F800 GS, bumping the displacement up to 900cc and increasing power to 105 HP and 73 lbs-ft of torque, and then had a lightweight bike built around it. What set it apart, however, was that the bike had a plush BMW saddle, a functional wind deflector, and a more relaxed peg position.

In a nod to practicality, it also had frame mount points at the rear for hard or soft saddlebags. Other features were that it had excellent brakes borrowed from BMW's touring bikes, and because of BMW's exacting manufacturing standards, the bikes were very well made. The only issue was that BMW was effectively competing against themselves, as a F800 GS was almost everything the Nuda was, but it was "a BMW" so it was seen as more premium.

As a result, the excellent Nuda 900 S, and the racier, sportier Nuda 900 R did not sell as well as expected. They were quietly discontinued in 2012, and Husqvarna was sold to KTM in 2013. Nowadays, the Nuda models are highly sought after because even a decade later, they are some of the most comfortable, realistically useable supermotos of recent memory.