SIMPLY CATCHING SIGHT OF the very clean white-and-red RD250E had brought back a few memories, and starting the engine really transported me back in time. The Yamaha fired up first kick with that raucous, clattery, off-beat rakkatack-tack of an exhaust note from its twin pipes, along with a small cloud of two-stroke exhaust smoke that provided the perfect, atmosphere-enhancing (and polluting) accompaniment.

I’d been looking forward to riding the RD250E all morning, and now I was really hooked. It’s a long time now since the late 1970s, when there were so many of them on the roads. But even now there’s something about Yamaha’s coffin-tanked twin that seems to sum up all that was best and craziest about the days when, for teenage speed freaks on a provisional licence, a hot Japanese 250-cc two-stroke like this was the height of motorcycling performance.

Ten minutes later, its engine warmed and the road ahead clear, the Yamaha revved hard through the gears while I held its throttle wide open, slid back on the seat and crouched down to help make the high-handle-barred RD as aerodynamically efficient as possible. The speedo needle crept towards 140 km/h, the engine screamed, the scenery rushed by… and it was very easy to understand the phenomenal sales success of Yamaha’s air-cooled, two-stroke parallel twins.

This RD250E was registered in 1980, the year that the RD250LC and its 350-cc sibling were unveiled, beginning a new era for Yamaha’s two-stroke roadsters. That was also the year King Kenny Roberts won his third straight 500-cc world championship, reinforcing the image of a two-stroke Yam with speed-block paint scheme as just about the fastest, snarliest thing on two wheels. (Ironically, Kork Ballington and Kawasaki had by this time taken over the 250-cc class.)