Barry Sheene's restored title-winning RG500
Two videos tracing the bike's rebuildSuzuki has released two videos that follow the restoration of Barry Sheene’s 1976 world championship-winning XR14 500GP bike.
The bike was restored by Martyn Ogborne, who worked with Team Suzuki in the 1970s and was Barry Sheene’s race technician, and Nigel Everett, who was a Grand Prix technician from 1975 and worked with Suzuki from 1982.
The factory racing version of the customer RG500 still belongs to the Sheene family, and was flown to the UK in 2016 as part of the Suzuki celebrations that marked 40 years since the late Sheene’s first world title.
Suzuki and the Sheene family then decided to start work on restoring the 1976 bike to its former glory, backed by Suzuki’s Vintage Parts Programme, which still supplies genuine Suzuki parts for older models, including the road-going RG500.
Sheene followed up his 1976 success with victory in the 1977 world 500 GP title, and he won 19 races in the premier category – 18 on Suzukis, one on a Yamaha – between 1975 and 1981.
Sheene and his family immigrated to Australia in the late 1980s – the warmer climate easier on his arthritic body (brought on by a number of massive crashes during his career) than the UK.
He died in 2002 at the age of 51 from cancer.
Tags
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
