POLISHED PRIVATEER
Oct 13, 2020
4 minutes
Words: Bertie Simmonds
Photographs:
Gary D Chapman, Don Morley
It’s a thoroughly modern classic – Honda’s VFR750R RC30. Built to win the nascent World Superbike championship in the late 1980s, it did indeed achieve that for Honda – American ‘Flyin’ Fred Merkel took his Rumi Honda RC30 to the title in the debut year of the series in 1988 and backed this up with the bike’s last title in 1989. That’s not all… a certain Carl Fogarty used his own Appleby Glade-backed V4 to win the TT F1 World Championship in 1988 and 1989 and then took the FIM Cup F1 series in 1990.
The RC30’s many wins on the roads proved the bike’s adaptability from short circuits to the more demanding roads.
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