by Dragos Chitulescu from https://www.autoevolution.com
MotoGP Inspired Honda RC213V-S Costs as Much as a Ferrari, Comes With Zero Miles.
When Honda first announced the RC213V-S a few years ago, quite a few people were hoping that they would at least get a chance to see this bike with their own eyes. After Honda took Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez to the RedBull Ring to test it, pointing out that this is the closest you could ever get to a MotoGP motorcycle, levels of excitement continued soaring.
Not long ago, we showed you a very spectacular Ducati 1299 Superleggera, which was already a very fast and very expensive motorcycle, and it looks like it still hasn’t been sold. But the fact that this RC213V-S just popped up is even more impressive. Because it’s nearly three times more expensive than the aforementioned Ducati, and it’s also much rarer.
Honda initially planned to release just 250 units of this bike, but rumors have pointed out that a smaller number has made it to production stages. It is a hand-built motorcycle in a dedicated factory in Japan, and the bike that is for sale here is unit number 007, which gives it an extra degree of coolness.
Looking over the specs, this particular unit is almost like the MotoGP bike but without the pneumatic valves and the seamless transmission.
Those were changed to provide increased reliability for people using them on public roads. There are also other elements to make it road-legal such as the headlights, taillights, side mirrors, a horn, and a license plate holder. While the “normal” (if you can call it that) version came with just 157 horsepower, this bike also has the optional HRC Sport kit, which should provide you with about 212 horsepower.
The parts included in the kit are just what you need to get the whole racing experience. There are many lightweight materials on this bike, and the way the chassis was built means that you will need a fair share of courage and skills to even acknowledge its potential. Not to mention the fact that just by riding it down the road won’t be enough for you to tell the difference from a tamer, albeit fast 1000cc bike.
All you need to do now is come up with £219,995 ($306,796), which is what you would expect to pay for a brand new Ferrari. But I guess it makes sense considering the odometer reads zero miles. Right now, I’m tempted to say that if I could afford to pay that much for a motorcycle, and if I had considerably more experience with race bikes than I do now, I would probably go all out and on a world tour of all the race tracks where MotoGP is held and see what it can do.
But I guess it’s considerably more likely for someone just to buy this and place it in storage or put it on display for years to come. And in 20 or 30 years from now, when everyone is likely to be riding electric bikes only, people will look at it and probably label it as a slow, outdated motorcycle, but a fascinating piece of history nonetheless.
