Joe Byrd’s ATV Racing Museum
- Updated: November 30, 2005
Joe has been involved in ATV racing nearly all of his life and his impressive collection of machines reflects it.
Each of these four machines represents a different era in ATV racing history.
While Joe has a few more machines in his collection, we found these to be the most significant…
The Honda ATC 200X is a legendary machine. Produced from 1983 to 1986, this 200cc air cooled four stroke was light and nimble in its day and was the launching point of many legendary ATV racing careers.
Still retaining its original plastic seat cover, they don’t come much more original than this 1989 Honda 250R. Spanning from 1986 to 1989, Honda’s 250R was the base for all of ATV racing from the mid 80s till 2004 when the production machines started to take over. While aftermarket parts were more common by 1989, people were showing up at races with nearly bone stock machines when this legendary ATV was conceived in ’86.
ATVs like this full Roll Design chassis 250R, represent the kind of machine that pros were racing throughout the 1990s and up through the 2003 season. Unlike the glory days of the mid 80s, these machines shared little with their stock Honda 250R counterparts. Some machines were so far from stock – they only utilized the lower Honda engine cases. While they may not want or be able to admit it in this day of factory contracts, with the benefit of aftermarket chromoly chassis, these retired steeds of steel still offer a level of handling and rigidity questionably unmatched by today’s production based machines.
This stock 2006 450R may not be a pro caliber machine just yet, but it is the starting point on which some pros will build race machines costing upwards of $20k. While the production based class in which the pros compete has eliminated the old custom built 250R based machines, this class has helped revive factory interest in building high performance ATVs.