Kurt Hall racing a WERA B Production race on a Honda VFR700 at Roebling Road in May of 1987. (Larry Lawrence photo)

I had to laugh when I came across this photo. This is Kurt Hall racing a WERA B Production race at Roebling Road. It’s not easy to tell, but Kurt is riding a Honda VFR700.

This was one of the tariff-beating 700s that the Japanese companies brought instead of 750s to avoid tariffs on the bigger displacement bikes imposed on the Japanese after they were determined by U.S. Trade officials to be dumping bikes on the market at under market value in the early 1980s. In 1987 Honda introduced the VFR700, determined by the magazines to be a great sport touring machine, but it was by no means considered a racer.

Surprisingly Honda came out with a fairly generous club racing contingency package to race the bike. Unfortunately for Honda the VFR700 was too heavy and underpowered to road race competitively and hardly anyone took them up on the offer.

Hall gave it a shot though and actually won a few low-key regional races early in the season on the VFR700. Hall joked that the one good thing he could say about the VFR was that it was the most comfortable bike he’d ever raced. I think he sold it after finding he might end up on his head if he tried to run with the GSXR’s, the ZXs and the FZRs of the world.