#moriwaki

There’s an old saying that we’ve said many times on the pages of MO: It’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow. Never has that adage held more truth than during this, our comparison of the Moriwaki MD250H and Aprilia RS125 in 2010. One (Moriwaki) was designed to be a purebred track machine, while the other (Apriila) distilled the company’s long-standing history of 125cc two-stroke racing into a street-legal model. Considering the difference in performance between the two machines, it was a no-brainer the Moriwaki would be the superior machine around the Streets of Willow Springs racetrack, but it isn’t every day that two small-displacement motorcycles as unique as these two come around our direction, and the opportunity to pit the two of them together proved too much to resist. For more photos of both bikes ripping around the track, be sure to visit the photo gallery.

Tired of traction control? Abhor ABS? Former GP racer and winner of the Daytona 200, Suzuka 8 Hours, Isle of Man TT, author and all-around cool guy Graeme Crosby still can’t sit still. From his New Zealand workshop comes word of this Crosby Moriwaki TTF1 Monster replica, the bike Cros rode in 1978/79 when “Superbikes” – hotted-up production machines – were just beginning to compete against factory production racers, and when guys like Mamoru Moriwaki and Pops Yoshimura were just getting off the ground.