1983 Honda Ascot FT 500 $1,200
Edmonds, WA
“1983 Honda ASCOT FT500 Beat those high gas prices with this rare 1983 Honda Ascot VT 500 FT which gets 60 mpg. Purchased from the original owner in ‘92, I have meticulously maintained it; all the service records as well as the factory shop manual go with it. It has always been garaged, gone 53,000 miles, has nearly new Metzler tires, oil and filter were recently changed. It has a temperature gauge, tachometer, center stand and is shaft drive. It starts and runs excellent, everything on it works. $1200.”
…how many folks have spent time on one of these classic Ascots? This was one of the most popular motorcycles of its day, especially for the younger guys. On any given day, there were probably a dozen of them parked at my high school, owned by teenage riders (while I had to do with my lowly CM250…heck, it was all I could do to convince my mother to buy a 250, a big boy 500 bike like the Ascot was “out of the question.”) This VT 500 Ascot is not to be confused with the FT500 which was a single cylinder bike. This VT500 Ascot has a twin cylinder engine and a shaft drive. It cuts a very classic profile, and this particular specimen looks to be in great shape. It does have, it looks like, an upgraded F1 exhaust. We don’t see very many good condition Honda Ascot 500 motorcycles for sale, so if you’re hankering to see one and are feeling nostalgic, click the image to contact the owner.
**UPDATE** I’ve finished a posting that sheds a little more light on this Honda Ascot VT500, a classic standard. You can see that review / posting here.
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7 users responded in this post
fail
my bad, wrong bike. this bike is cool. dont really see much of them any more. kinda have a weird enduro/chopper look.
Ha! Chris, this bike was around before you were born! I think they were actually styled after the Flat Track cycle that was all the rage in 1980. And by ‘all the rage’ I mean in two midwest states. And by ‘1980′ I mean June of 1980.
Hey guys, guess what? I JUST BOUGHT THAT BIKE! Hilarious that I googled the Ascot and found, not only a blog post about Ascots, but about the exact one I just bought! Haha
My story in a nutshell, I used to own an ‘84 Honda V65 Sabre for a few years back in the old days, man I LOVED THAT BIKE! Anyway to make a long story short time passed and I ended up moving on but never forgot how much I loved that Sabre. Fast forward to present, my girlfriend starts talking about how she wants to get a little scooter to putt around town on, and that gets me thinking I’d like to go with but not on a scooter, nothing against them, just not my speed. So I pop on cycle trader looking around for a cheap bike and spotted this Ascot. Man, I recognize it’s not the bike for everyone, and maybe not even the “best” bike I could have gotten for the money, but, for me, it’s just about perfect. I just need a putt around town bike that can run down my girlfriend’s scooter if I have to (lol) and this thing reminds me so so much of something like a “junior” version of my Saber, I am very happy with it, and it’s small enough (power wise) that I was even able to convince the girlfriend that I won’t get killed on it. Had I come home with an actual V65 she would probably have had a heart attack, so this Ascot is just exactly what I was looking for.
Previous owner was a cool guy too. It was nice talking to him about this bike while he showed me his maintenance scrapbook and talked about the whole history of his owning it. I’m stoked to be putting around town on it!
That is very cool, thanks very much for coming to share your story! Yeah, I’d love to own a V65 Sabre - I had a V-Max for about a year and while its power was awesome, it wasn’t very easy to live with. I see the V65 Sabre as just as powerful but better all around than mad max.
-Don
Thanks man, yeah, tell you what, that V65 was *A LOT* OF BIKE. You see “these damn kids” (j/k boys) running around on modern street bikes that all look and behave very much like most other modern street bikes, but on that Sabre it acted more or less like a car engine on two wheels, and the darn thing weighed (literally) about half a ton. It is a whole different power cruiser kind of experience to be going top end down the freeway and your bike is making the trucks wobble! I have to admit, I was considering a really cheap Sabre but the few I spotted around were either really used up and ridden hard or more money than I was looking to spend this time around. Then there’s the girlfriend of course, if I pulled up beside her scooter on my Sabre the engine/exhaust note would probably thump her off balance
This Ascot is mild enough she might even get brave enough to sit on the back of it sometime. I hope we have a long summer…
PS to ChrisGPZ, a good buddy of mine back in my Sabre days had a GPz, loved that thing used to go tandem riding it was cool, and to Don I had another buddy that had a mad max later on, he loved it too, there’s just nothing like a good fun bike
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