Motorcycle Engines So DANGEROUS They Rewrote the Rules

The history of motorcycle racing is full of engines so fast, so clever, or so dangerous that the people running the sport rewrote the rules to stop them. This is the full story of every major motorcycle engine design that was banned, regulated out of existence, or engineered into obsolescence by the rulebook. From supercharged BMWs that dominated pre-war racing until forced induction was prohibited in 1946, to the screaming 500cc two-stroke Grand Prix bikes that terrorized riders for 27 years before being replaced by four-strokes in 2002. From Honda's insane oval-piston NR500 that disguised a V8 as a V4 to exploit a loophole, to Norton's rotary Wankel that won a national championship and got the rules rewritten. From the brief and chaotic turbo motorcycle wars of the 1980s to John Britten's hand-built V1000 masterpiece that could beat factory superbikes but never met homologation requirements. And the Kawasaki H2R, the most powerful production motorcycle engine ever built, banned from every racing series on earth. Every banned engine. Every killed design. And what it all means for the future of motorcycle engineering.