NO, it’s not Honda’s long-promised RCV road bike but in the meantime the newly-revealed Ronax 500 is the closest thing to a GP bike you’re ever likely to be able to buy.
As you can probably tell from the ‘500’ name, it’s not taking its inspiration from the latest generation of four-stroke monsters but from an earlier era of more delicate, knife-edge 500cc two-strokes. Yes, it does look a lot like an NSR500, doesn’t it? And yes, they’re making 46 of them, which is a number that’s reminiscent of someone who perhaps took the NSR500 to its last world title. But you’ll find no official mention of that chap’s name on the Ronax website.
In terms of spec, the bike isn’t far from an NSR either, even if it is all actually the work of the guys at German firm Ronax. The 499cc motor is an 80-degree V4 with twin contra-rotating crankshafts, fuel injection and a six-speed cassette gearbox. At 160bhp, it’s a tad down on the 180-200bhp that the last of the 500cc strokers were making, but it’s supposed to be road legal and will hopefully last more than a race distance, too, so we’ll let them off for that.
What’s perhaps harder to swallow is the price. It’s €100,000. Plus VAT. Plus shipping. Let’s face it, you’ll get no change from £100,000 once you’ve landed one in the UK. Call it two-and-a-half Desmosedici RRs. Or an NR750 and enough change to get a brand new S1000RR for daily use. Or, possibly, one of Honda’s RCV road bikes as and when they get around to actually making them.
But then again, maybe if you’ve got that sort of change sitting around, you’ll be in a position to simply get one of each.
For more details, see Ronax.
