Is there not some reason 4 stroke 250's are popular in Oz, some licence issue I thought??

The CBR250 was made to suit the old Jap licencing law that was the mother of all the 400cc sports bikes and the whole grey bike scene.

There were as far as I know three levels of licence;

1; 250cc, 45bhp licence (later dropped to 40bhp, hence the '28 and VJ23 make 40 horse)
2; 400cc, 60bhp licence (later dropped to 55bhp hence the RVF made 55 bhp)
3; unlimited cc licence that was damn hard to get.

CBR250's were never sold in England offically (neither were CBR400s or RVF400s) and there are very very very few here, the RVF and CBR400s are quite popular by comparision. I'd have guessed for every CBR250 here there's got to be 20 400's.

In the list of rare 4 stroke 250/400's there are also ZXR250's, ZZR250's, Hornet 250's, Ducati Monter 400's, Transalp 400's and a whole load of others all made for Japs who wanted big bikes but could neither fit them nor ride them.

I thought they were all discontinued by around 2000 when the Japs bought their licence regs in line with the rest of the universe.
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