FEW bikes command as much respect as the oval piston Honda NR750 does. At its release in 1991 Ducati launched the air-cooled 888, Triumph the Sprint 900 and Suzuki were still churning out the Bandits.
But to the average MoT tester of the time, stripping back the carbon fairing of the NR750 and revealing its inner workings must have been like gazing into a space station’s operating systems. It was so ahead of its time, electronically, aesthetically and mechanically. Even the screen was covered in titanium and cost over a grand to replace!
All this technical wizardry came at a price though, the list price for an Nr750 was £38,000 when new. The demand was so much though that people were selling their place in the queue for more than that. To put that into context, the average house price in the UK in January 1991 was around £60k. The demand for bikes and the limit number made (circa 300) made prices sky-rocket, and today owning an NR is for most, just a pipe dream.
Unless you are willing to downsize a bit. Well, a lot. Okay, it’s a minibike, but you have to admit, that first picture had you fooled!
And it’s not some cheap tat either, this beautiful little gem has been built by one of the clever folk at Honda, as a homage to the real thing. He’s used top-notch kit too, aluminium swingarm, carbon bodywork, even the grills on the side of the fairing are almost exactly like those on the real thing.
He’s not the only one at it, Honda has a whole team of engineers that meet up at lunch and after work and set about creating miniature versions of some of Honda’s most famous road and race machines – check out the collection above!
Pictures from Young Machine.
