After retiring from American Honda some years ago, ex-race team manager Gary Mathers told me a story about those VFR racebikes. "We used to put a wet towel on the fuel tank prior to the start of the race and bunch it up near the front to cover up the steering-head area, which had been modified extensively to alter the bike's geometry; they wouldn't turn with stock geometry! No one noticed until one particular rain race, when we still had the towels in place [there ostensibly to keep the tank cool] despite the cool temperatures." Seems the rule-bending of the mid-'70s and early-'80s was alive and well even in the late-'80s.
Although not available in the U.S. until '90, Honda's RC30-also known as the VFR750R-was introduced to Europe and Canada in '88 and quickly became the racebike to have, at least for those with a) $15,000 to buy the bike and b) the addi-tional money to equip it with the right HRC parts. "The RCs had aluminum fuel tanks, single-sided swingarms and were very cool," O'Shea says. "If you could afford one, you had something special.
"The ex-Spencer RC30 I have was found in Roadracing World's want ads. This is serial #12, bought in Canada by Craig Erion. This was one of Freddie's comeback bikes for the '90 season. You could get 132 rear-wheel horsepower using the HRC kit pieces, but getting 140 bhp forced you to buy the works NLOB parts. My bike has the NLOB motor with all the goodies and, of course, Two Brothers Racing's famous paint scheme."
Neither of the Interceptors ran well during our day at Barber Motorsports Park in 2005, so O'Shea and I only got a few laps on each. But the RC30 was a peach, running fast and strong all day long. Compared to today's 160-horse R1s and GSX-R1000s, the RC wasn't a stunner power-wise, but it did have that magically solid, feedback-intensive feel at speed that all good racebikes have. I hated getting off the thing!
Where the Superbike class of the mid- to late-'70s was, as I wrote in Part I of this story, "young, raw and romantic," by '83 all that had changed. Just a few years after getting back into Superbike racing with its ferocious, 1025cc inline-fours, Big Red's roadrace effort truly became the Team Honda behemoth we all remember, with actual megabucks backing up a new-generation bike featuring a liquid-cooled 750cc V-four, perimeter frame and GP-spec 16-inch front wheel.
Honda's unabashed goal for '83 was to win the AMA Superbike title to launch its tech-packed V45 Interceptor. The team went to the Daytona season opener loaded for bear, with a handful of factory machines on the grid. Spencer, who would win the 500cc world title later that year, won the race, and Honda riders won the majority of races that season. But it was a young Rainey riding a two-valve, air-cooled, Muzzy-tuned Kawasaki GPz750 who came away with the championship over Mike Baldwin and Merkel. Still, there was no doubting the Interceptor's potential or the direction Superbike racing was headed.
Merkel would prove this without a doubt the following year when he won the '84 title going away with 10 wins. It was a similar story in '85, the blonde Californian winning six races on his way to the championship.
"Although the Merkel replica I pieced together from that parts cache I got from Honda isn't the exact bike Merkel rode, it's the real deal, and some of the parts did come from Fred's actual racebike," O'Shea says. "The frame is an HRC unit, while the engine is the rare NW6-spec-a works motor that Merkel or Spencer would have had access to, with plenty of magnesium and titanium inside."
Asked about the parts cache he'd mentioned several times, O'Shea replies, "Over the years I developed a good relationship with Team Honda-Brian Uchida especially. They knew the bikes I'd gotten were in good hands, that I'd treat them with respect. So I'm talking to Uchida on the phone one day and he says, 'We'd like to get rid of all our surplus HRC parts-VF and VFR stuff, everything we've got.' So I ask him about a price, and he asks me, 'What do you think it's all worth?' I ask him what's there, and he says there's so much he couldn't even begin to inventory it all: 'Eight or 10 pallets worth,' he says. He said Honda didn't want to be nickeled and dimed to death.
"So we come up with a price: $12,500, delivered. I didn't have the money, and almost passed, but I ended up borrowing it. A week or two later, eight pallets show up at my buddy's machine shop. I see this and think, "Holy shit! There are wheels and engines and frames and titanium engine parts, a little of everything. So I call Uchida and say, 'Well, the eagle has landed,' and he says, 'Nope, another eight pallets just left here.' Whoa! I ended up with mountains of stuff: boxes with 'Spencer forks' written on them, HRC engines, radiators... It was crazy; a gift, really. And to think I almost passed on it!"
Asked what's happened to the parts, he says, "I've gotten rid of a lot of it. I've helped people restore their Honda racebikes, traded for parts or bikes I wanted, etc. The wild thing is that it's never gonna happen again. That was a special time, but it's gone now."
Uchida echoes O'Shea's sentiment: "Yep, no one will ever have access to those types of parts again. Now, everything goes back to Japan. What Brian's got is really rare and really special."
Whether he's talking about the parts or O'Shea himself, we couldn't agree more.
Look for Parts III and IV of the "Mr. Superbike" story in upcoming issues.