SCHWANTZ SMOKER '91 RGV500 XR76

We all had our idols growing up, didn’t we? If you’d have asked me in the nineties who my hero was, I’d have said with absolutely no hesitation, H from Steps. Effeminate though he was, as far as I was concerned, there was no other A-lister in the music industry at the time who could perform a perfect twist-step-and-jump-2-3-4, without going off key. But whilst I was singing Tragedy into my sister’s hairbrush, gazing jealously at H’s blonde curtains, Oliver Lawrence from Lincolnshire was eyeing up Kevin Schwantz’s RGV500. You see, the posters that adorned Oliver’s childhood bedroom wall starred not the musical heartthrobs of the 80s and 90s, but the two-wheeled, singing smoke machines that, back then, were considered at the very cutting edge of bike racing technology. And taking centre stage on Oliver’s wall of wonder was the aforementioned 1991 Suzuki RVG500