Ronax 500 – the Street Legal Two-Stroke GP Replica
After teasing us for nearly two months, German brand Ronax has revealed its 500cc two-stroke sportbike. Ronax isn’t saying it’s a street-legal replica of the Honda NSR500 that Valentino Rossi rode to win the 2001 Grand Prix world championship – probably because they legally can’t – but that’s essentially what the 500 is.
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Visually, the Ronax 500 clearly takes its inspiration from Rossi’s Nastro Azzurro Honda (below). The fairing design is similar, including the air intake on the nose, which houses the Ronax’s LED headlights. The white band across the fairing is clearly inspired by the GP bike, including the small script in the black striping that on the Ronax reads “limited edition”. Then of course, there’s the logo on the front of the fairing and repeated in yellow on the tail that is clearly supposed to be Rossi’s #46 (but if that weren’t obvious enough, Ronax is only producing 46 units of the 500.)
Internally, the Ronax differs from the NSR. While the 54mm bore and 54.5mm stroke are the same, the Ronax-developed engine is an 80-degree V-Four instead of the Honda’s 112-degree configuration. While the NSR500 had a single counter-rotating crankshaft, the aluminum Ronax engine uses two, similar to NSR’s competitors from Yamaha and Suzuki. Ronax claims a peak output of 160hp at 11,500 rpm. The fuel injection system has two selectable mappings for sport and rain riding modes.
The suspension system is from Ohlins while Brembo provides the radial-mount monobloc calipers.
If you want your own Ronax 500, then you’d better be able to pony up the €100,000 (US$135,915) asking price. You’d also have to put down an advanced payment of at least 30% plus taxes, and arrange for your own delivery.
[Source: Ronax]
Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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