Cobra RS750 homage

This was sent to us by former Cycle World editor, David Edwards. It's got some rake on it, but I still like it. Thanks David.

Whoa, what's this, an RS750 Honda that someone has put on the street?! Great idea. Honda's works V-Twin flat-trackers were Harley-beaters back in the 1980s. Running the same bore x stroke dimensions as Milwaukee's venerable XR-750 but with overhead cams and four valves per pot, the Honda had an edge in outright horsepower. They also hired top guns Bubba Shobert and Ricky Graham to apply that power to the track, helped by a new single-shock chassis. Starting 1984, the RS750 reeled off four straight AMA championships.

Yeah, well, looks aside, that's not this RS750. Instead, this bike started off as a stock 2010-model Honda Shadow V-Twin – also known as the RS750. The model was new to Honda's lineup this year; more standard than cruiser, and with chain final drive instead of a shaft as used by the rest of the Shadows.

In the past 15 years, fabrication ace Berg has built some 30 bikes for Cobra as rolling calling cards for the company's line of exhaust pipes, chrome and billet accessories, and fuel-injection modules. Following the fashions of the day these have tended to be low riders, choppers or bob-jobs, but with choppers in particular as stale as last week's bagels, a different direction was called for. Between its model name and its ties back to the company's 1980s glory days, an RS750 street-tracker just seemed like a natural. Besides, who doesn't like a street-tracker?

Finished in a dead-nuts replication of the factory's red-white-and-blue paint scheme, the "Bubba Bike" is a convincing imitation. Of course, Berg is an old hand at these kind of clones. In 1996 he built an Indian-inspired "Super Chief" showbike for Cobra, based on a Kawasaki Vulcan. Reaction was so strong that Kawasaki shipped the bike off to Japan, where it was transformed in the production Drifter. Here's hoping history repeats itself, huh?