Looking at the life and very short times of the 1980 Honda CR250R, the one and only motocross bike that was built in America by the Honda Motor Company.

WORDS: Blake Wharton
PHOTOS: RACER X ARCHIVES

The making of American motocross bikes has long been hit-or-miss, but mostly on the miss side of the equation. Manufacturers just haven’t ever really been able to get dirt bikes right like their counterparts in Japan or Europe. Harley Davidson’s 1978 MX 250, Cannondale’s 1999 MX 400, and the more recent Alta Motors electric bike were all high-profile, well-intended American-made failures, along with lesser attempts like Yankee and Rokon in the seventies, and ATK in the eighties and nineties. However, there was another player that just so happened to make a decent dirt bike that came with a U.S. birth certificate, but you may not have realized it. The 1980 Honda CR250R is a bike that was partially made and assembled in what was then a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Marysville, Ohio owned by the Honda Motor Company.