from the comments...(atleast it narrows it down some?) "Thanks for looking. The footage was taken between 21st & 23rd May 2007 by MCN & 3-cam in preparation for the MCN TT article that was published on 30 June 2007. The footage was in conjunction with classic bike suppliers ps-pt who provided an RC30, RC45 & an OWO1 for this special article. "
I only ever heard of an RC51 is it me or are they up bars on that I see the tubes but no clip ons anyway that looked fun the whole other side of the road thing gets me all Ball Tingly I keep thinking dude is gonna get whacked
the rc30 and rc45 were the final versions of the honda interceptor 500 and 750. The rc30 and rc45 were not released as road legal bikes here in the US (aside from a very few grey market imports and *I think* some that came in from Canada) which is why they are not familiar to US riders that were not into racing in the early to mid 90's.
The RC51 was the next generation after the rc45 when the AMA rules allowed more displacement (1000cc for a twin versus 750cc for the 4 cylinder bikes) along with allowing the twins to be lighter. When the AMA rules were changed to re-level the playing field and the advantage was lost Honda went back to the in-line 4 again.
Of course this is way over-simplified in order to be explained in a single paragraph, but that is where the RC30 and RC45 came from and why they may seem unfamiliar.
(Message edited by diablobrian on February 08, 2009)
Nicky did spend a couple of years on the rc51, and won his AMA superbike championship on it. One of the few respites from Mladin/Yoshimura domination of the class for the past decade or so...
Which is/was another extremely rare bike here in the US. It amazed me when Yamaha stopped importing the 750s and basically handed that (very popular at the time) segment of the market over to Suzuki and Kawasaki with Honda's VFR already shifted over to the sport touring market it should have been a chance for the second biggest of the Japanese manf. to take a bite out of "Big Red". With racing classes being what they were importing only enough bikes to squeak through homolgation (and it didn't take many back then, ie. the 50 VR1000's H-D built for road use...in (?) Poland (?)).
The 750 was and is a very good balance of power and weight for the street (if you are looking at Japanese sport bikes) such a very small percentage of riders really respect their liter bikes for what they are capable of and fewer still can ride them any faster than a 600 on a road with actual curves in it. Any monkey can pull the trigger on one, finesse is where most squids fall short IMHO.
The Superbike series has produced some really nice homologation specials over the years... Ducati 851/888's in the various SP guises, Honda RC30, RC45 and RC51 SP-1 and SP-2, Yamaha OW01, Suzi GSXR750SP, and there were even homologation versions of the ZXR750/ZX-7 (ZXR750M?).... All of those bikes were expensive when new, but maybe not so expensive (relatively) as the 1098R... Although at least a 1098R can be road registered for us mere mortals...
An RC30 is still near the top of my dream bikes, and a VFR400 would be cool to own .