25 Years Ago February 1988

25 YEARS AGO FEBRUARY 1988

ROUNDUP

Okay, this is getting a little close to home. I got my first job later in 1988 at Cycle magazine, and that new, second-generation GSX-R750 on the cover looks suspiciously like the one that jumped out from under me on Decker Canyon.

There was oil on the road, I swear it! I haven't changed much, but Kevin Schwantz is 25 years older.

• Paul Dean delivered a cautionary Editorial about the need for us motorcyclists to behave respon sibly, then personally took up the cudgels aboard Schwantz's Yoshimura Superbike (whose fork had "more adjusters than an insurance convention") for some hot laps around Willow Springs. Meanwhile, Feature Editor David Edwards filed a similar four-page feature of derring-do on the Team Lockhart GSX-R1 100 champion ship endurance bike.

•Our two-page report on the Yoshimura Tornado GSX-R-based streetbike was followed by another GSX-R test, this one Scott Gray's Formula USA-winning

GSX-R1 100 beast, which "accelerates like the Enterprise after Captain Kirk calls down to the engine room for Warp Eight."

•One lucky editor traveled to Honda HO in Japan to ride the new RC3O, Honda's exotic titani um-rodded Superbike homologa tion special. Its $11,000 price tag was crazy expensive, but it didn't matter because American Honda, worried about the Danforth anti superbike bill, had declined to import the bike. About 300 RC5 did make it to the U.S. eventually.

John Burns