i was at track day in fontana years ago and a guy had a nsr500 there with a honda mechanic. pretty bad ass.
NSR500V? The 4 did not get out to the public no matter how much money they had. Anyways, HRC only produced something like 20 of the Vs and seeing one is like seeing a unicorn farting rainbows on Mia Kalif's ass.
Per Hogdal was his name. He was my race team partner for a few years when we ran two strokes. We took Barney to Macau on the bike and did a few club races with the bike. I bought the bike from Per when he had enough. The bike is now awaiting a full restoration on my bench here at “the thermal club” in CA. I’ve raced it a few times (Rd America is awesome on the bike!). It was originally John McGuiness’s TT bike from the Vimto team in the UK
That’s my bike with a stock photo attached. Lol Not for sale at this time. VIN # NSR500VF- 81023. First featured in RoadRacing World February 2000 (some mention of it this month too maybe) Pete has a GREAT collection! Fantastic descriptions and tons of trick parts. I have bought a few of his bikes to ride and collect.
Ducati did this with a Stoner GP10 and Rossi GP11 bike. I think they sold for around this price as well...but would not run IIRC.
It’s not that competitors would copy the bike. Any competitor would want to disassemble and reverse engineer it to some degree. Just to see where KTM was at vis a vis their project and to see if there were any tricks they might steal. Also to see what strengths and weaknesses might be exploited.
There are more than a couple of Ducati MotoGP bikes in private hands. They have been selling them for years.