Yamaha ad. Page 1
In the early-to-mid-1980s there was no more popular club racing motorcycle than the Yamaha RZ350. Riders like Kevin Schwantz and Jamie James – and I’m sure countless others – first got a taste of road racing aboard this sweet little water-cooled, street-legal racebike.
In 1984 Yamaha introduced the Kenny Roberts replica. It would be interesting to know what percentage of these bikes Yamaha sold ultimately made it to the race track. I would guess it would be the highest percentage of any large scale production motorcycle ever.
This ad was from a 1984 magazine. You can see I had a bit of trouble stitching the two images together. It was a great tribute to Roberts, who had just retired from Grand Prix racing.
Yamaha ad. Page 2.
Rider Files 
I’d guess that more ended up on the track than on the street for sure.
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My racing effort began on the same yellow bike. So much fun it was!
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Mark
I came up riding four-strokes (even off-road) and the first two-stroke I rode was a friend’s RD350. Nothing like it went the thing came “on the pipe”. An explosion of acceleration.
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I have a Kenny Roberts RZ that I bought new in 1984, it was a street bike, then I roadraced it with WERA, now it’s a drag bike. And I have some cool LL pics of it from back in the day, racing the WERA North Central region.
And now it’s worth twice what I paid for it.
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