Top 20 ‘grey’ import motorcycles: Part 1
The bikes we were never given a chance at from the UK's official importers. Part one features our countdown from 20 to 11.
THE ‘GREY’ import scene was massive back in the 1990s – and still rumbles along to this day – meaning that on the used market you can find oddities that were never officially available from UK dealers.
During the 80s and 90s in particular there was a trend for Japanese manufacturers to create bikes solely for their home market, resisting all calls to officially bring them to Britain – usually because if they had the prices would have been too high to attract any sales. Often created with Japanese laws in mind, hence the proliferation of high-spec 400cc machines, the bikes may not have made commercial sense when new but as used buys they were an attractive proposition. Boat loads were brought over, and still are, often purchased unseen by the container-full as a sort of exotic lucky dip for brave dealers.
Of course there’s a down-side. The reality of a grey import can be a series of frustrating hunts for parts – the chap behind the parts counter at your local dealer will probably react as though you’ve asked for a medium-rare unicorn steak with pepper sauce – although the internet’s global market means it’s not as tough as it was back in 90s when most of these bikes were actually brought over.
We’ve picked 20 of the best and most interesting Japan-only machines that, with enough searching, you might be able to find on these shores. The list could have been longer, with luminaries such as the Kawasaki ZXR250, Honda CBR750 Hurricane and Yamaha FZR400RR
20: Honda CBR400RR
WHEN it comes to the ubiquitous grey import, it’s a showdown between the VFR400R NC30 and the CBR400RR for which is most common. So while many of the bikes on this list are here because they’re rare or unfamiliar, the CBR400RR gets its place because they’re still easy to find. You might well have even owned one. While the CBR400 dates back to the original, jelly-mould ‘Hurricane’ shape, it’s the RR that really made its mark here during the grey import boom of the 90s. Usually split into two series – the NC23, or ‘Tri-arm’ thanks to its braced swingarm design, and the NC29 ‘Gull-arm’ with its curved swingarm – both are great little machines. Not quite as high-spec as the NC30, since they were significantly cheaper when new, but still superb on both the track and the road.
