5-17 Update: One month later, this beauty is still up for sale. Find it with a slight discount (down to $6900) here on Craigslist in Andover, Massachusetts.
The RC51 combined Honda reliability with the joy of a V-Twin engine, beating Ducati at its own game with multiple World Superbike Championships and a AMA Championship. In 2002, Honda made some revisions to create the SP2 variant.
The short story is that Honda took what they learned in WSBK to improve the SP2, resulting in a loss in weight (Honda shaved weight off many individual parts – the frame lost 280 grams, for example) and a two horsepower bump. The windshield is 1.2 inches taller, the swingarm is 16mm longer – it’s just a combination of a lot of little changes. For more on the changes to the SP2 RC51, check out this review on Motorcyclist Online.
This one-owner example has 11,800 miles and the sale will include work stands, the service manual, and all documentation. Choice upgrades include a Power Commander, Sargent seat, Shorai battery, and my favorite modification, the Jardine exhaust. I always thought these pipes sounded amazing with the RC51, though this is the best example I could find online after a brief search:
Find this RC51 for sale here on Craigslist in Andover, Massachusetts (my hometown!) for $6,969 (in honor of Nicky Hayden).