Dealer refuses to sell Yamaha OW-01

This rare Yamaha FZR750RR OW-01 with only six miles on the clock has been standing in a showroom for 22 years, but despite customers offering £30,000, the dealer is still refusing to sell.

The bike was bought by the original owner of Keys Motorcycles in Worthing, Sussex, the late Basil Keys. It arrived at the dealership on May 22, 1989 and has been there ever since. Well, almost.

Keys Motorcycles was the first Yamaha dealer in the UK and the showroom was intended to pay the bills and fund Basil’s hobbies of racing and bike collecting. Steve Keys, Basil’s grandson, now owns the dealership along with perhaps Britain’s lowest mileage OW-01s parked behind his desk.

Steve said: “The bike has always been in and around the showroom or in the stores. As a road-going race bike, the shop had to have one. But Basil only pretended he wanted to sell it; when a customer came in with the money he wouldn’t take it.”

Basil was a regular at the Brighton Speed Trials, competing in the sea front, quarter-mile drag strip challenge until he was 86. “For whatever reason, he didn’t have a bike ready for the 1989 Trials,” explains Steve.

“So my grandfather took the bike out of the showroom and competed on it. He won a trophy every year he entered, so the six miles on the clock will have been successful ones.”