About the 250cc bike list
Welcome to the 250cc bike list. This site offers a list of bike models and details to help new riders gain an understanding of what models are out there and what might be right for them.
History
Sometime around 1994 I turned 30 and decided to get a road bike. The state licensing laws limit new riders to 250cc capacity only for a period of a year or two until the open license is attained. I guesss the logic is that you can't get on a Fireblade from day one so you're more likely to live. I've heard that the highest risk group for accidents is actually the 30-something bracket where people like me remember the excitement of mini-bikes or dirt bikes from their youth and have reached a stage where they can afford something better.
My first problem when I looked in the local paper was working out what bike I wanted. All I saw was a seemingly endless list of bike models and prices. I had no idea what was a street bike, a trail bike, enduro, motocross, farm, cruiser, or anything else. So, I began compiling a list in Notepad (or maybe in vi given that I worked on UN*X at the time).
So the 250cc Bike List started life in the early 1990s as a flat file compilation of motorcycle models. As it grew in size it was posted relatively regularly to the Usenet newsgroup aus.motorcycles. At some point the most excellent John Lamp began hosting the list for me and formatted it nicely in HTML. Updates became less frequent as I travelled overseas for a few years between 1995 and 1998.
On my return to Australia I registered the domain 250ccbikes.com and took the plunge to convert the essentially flat file into a database to allow searching of the database against various criteria. For a while I also added the ability for people to anonymously upload their own bike pictures. That will come back in time.
At this point, I've pulled the site down to a very simple format while I set to freshening up the content. Some of the content has remained relatively unchanged for 10 years so it's well past time. Fortunately, the older entries serve as a living history of some of the bikes no longer in production and are hence still valid.
This site is entirely self-funded out of my own pocket.
Enjoy!
