Mr. October"S Fzr

MR. OCTOBER"S FZR

I VI WHEN REGGIE JACKSON WANTED to personalize his Yamaha FZR 1000, there was only one limit: He wasn’t out to increase the machine’s performance. “The bike is already better than I am,” he explains. Still, the former baseball superstar had a lot of room to make a styling statement.

Most obvious is the bike’s paint, a

pearl-white base with multi-colored stripes that wrap around the body and fold beneath the bike. Greg Barton, owner of Kustom Body Shop in San Francisco (415/873501 1), did the paint work, with design help from Jackson, and the FZR has a finish that rivals those on the finest cars in Jackson's worldclass automobile collection.

Preferring polished wheels to the Stocker’s white hoops, Jackson purchased a set of Kosman Specialties wheels. These use Akront rims attached by three machined spokes bolted to billet hubs.

With an eye for the flamboyant, Jackson had the fairing mounting bar above the top triple clamp chromed. He did the same to the air ducts that connect the fairing scoops to the carburetors. The Vance & Hines exhaust pipe was also chromed. The final touch was a Zero Gravity windscreen.

Obviously, the FZR-RJO ( Reggie Jackson Custom) is a stunning motorcycle to look at. but Jackson does not treat it like a showpiece. It’s the bike he rides around tow n, his commuter—though it may well be the best-looking commuter bike of all

time.

— Camron E. Bussard