Top 10 WSB bikes
Ducati 916
6 WSB titles – prices from £4000 Beautiful and successful, it grew into 955, 996 and 998 Testastretta race versions. As Foggy says: “I saw it for the first time and thought ‘that’s too beautiful to ride what if I drop it?’ It was a Ferrari on two wheels, just an amazing piece of art and machinery and so ahead of its time. When I went out on track for the first time it wasn’t easy to ride: in fact the old 888 was better. The 916 racer was nervous, short twitchy… we made the thing longer overall with a long swingarm, then kicked the front out and it was suddenly built for my style of riding.”
Honda RC30
2 WSB titles – prices from £20,000 If you bought a used RC30 20 years back for around £5500 you’d be laughing now. Not the easiest bike to race – it was notoriously front-end sensitive – but it took Honda’s first two WSB titles.
Kawasaki ZXR750/ZX-7R
1 WSB title – prices from £1500 Here to represent the ZXR/ZX-7R dynasty. It was not the most successful racer, but perhaps its the cheapest way into superbike ownership…
Ducati 851/888
3 WSB titles – prices from £6000 The 851/888 helped start the dynasty of 14 World Superbike championships for Ducati, as well as hundreds of race wins, going all the way to Carlos Checa’s win with the 1098R in 2011 and Chaz Davies’ Panagali wins today. There’s also a brutish beauty to it that we so love…
Honda VTR1000 SP1/2
2 WSB titles – prices from £3500 Honda ‘does a Ducati’ in 2000 and takes the title and another in 2002. The road bike is now moving up in value. Colin Edwards says: “The SP-2 of 2002 is perhaps my favourite race bike. Sometimes it didn’t feel that fast, but you’d look at the lap-times and be surprised.”
Honda RC45,
1 WSB title – prices from £20,000 History was unkind to the RC30’S successor, but today people love it and prices show that. Okay, so it only took the one title, but it did take endurance titles and Isle of Man TT wins.
Yamaha OW-01,
0 WSB title – prices from £13,000 It never did win the WSB title – but the OW-01’S 16 wins were shared over a wide spectrum of riders including some legendary names: Peter Goodard, Mike Dowson, our own Terry Rymer and the late great Fabrizio Pirovano.
Aprilia RSV-R Mille
0 WSB titles – prices from £2000 In the hands of Troy Corser the Mille took an impressive eight wins during 2000-2001. The road bike was a corker and today it is still a brilliant cost-effective alternative to a Ducati – especially if you’re ‘normal-sized’.
Suzuki GSX-R750 SRAD
0 WSB titles – prices from £1200 It never won a WSB title, but it did pick up six wins overall, two with Japanese wildcards and later in the hands Pier-francesco Chili. It also took World Endurance titles and is still cheap.
Yamaha YZF-R7,
0 WSB titles – prices from £20,000 Just getting the nod in the top 10 over the earlier YZF750 (even if the YZF took eight wins to the R7’s five) this was a real homologation special. Again, it failed to win a title but it was so beautiful, even if 106bhp was never going to pull your arms off in road trim.