The opportunity to buy genuine MotoGP bikes doesn't happen every day, let alone four of them! In the mid 2010s, the Claiming Rule Team category was introduced to MotoGP to bolster flagging grids and these four Aprilias were run by Paul Bird Motorsport. They are now up for auction along with a significant line-up of racing machinery.

Auction of Mouth-Watering Line-Up of Genuine Racing Machinery

Don't you just hate those people who have so much spare cash that they can indulge in their passion for motorcycles and build up a significant collection of racing bikes the rest of us can only dream about?

The collection, amassed by well-known British sponsor and team owner Phil Morris, will be coming up for auction in October in the UK and is surely one of the best collections of racing machinery, some of it with race-winning provenance.

Morris acquired the Aprilias direct from Bird in 2015 and said: "They would have cost €850,000 per bike when new," adding: "This is such a unique opportunity for an individual to buy one or even all four Moto GP machines. You cannot buy a privateer MotoGP bike dating from 2015 onwards."

The MotoGP bikes are particularly important as, since 2015, satellite team MotoGP bikes have been leased to the teams and therefore never come up for sale as they return to the factory once they are done with.

In the early 2010s, faced with dwindling grids, MotoGP organiser Dorna announced the Claiming Rule Teams (CRT) category to run alongside the factory prototypes. In order to save costs, the CRT teams could run production engines in prototype chassis. These engines would be claimable by factory teams for a set fee of €25,000, though why a factory team would want to acquire a tuned road-bike engine was never explained. In the event, none ever did. But, as a way of boosting grid numbers, it was a success, even if it did nothing for the quality of the racing at the back of the grid.

While the CRT MotoGP bikes might not be full-on MotoGP prototypes, they are still MotoGP bikes and, as such, very desirable.

The mouth-watering collection up for auction includes not only the four 1000cc MotoGP CRT Aprilias, as run by Paul Bird Motorsport for riders such as James Ellison, Michael Laverty and Broc Parkes, but other British Superbike, Supersport and Superstock race machines, as well as a pair of early-seventies Yamaha TD2 and TD3 250cc racers, one ridden by Phil Read, a Moto2 race bike and a pair of Moto3 race bikes, one once ridden by last year's MotoGP World Champion, Joan Mir.

To view the full catalogue, which includes hundreds of bikes and miscellaneous spares and memorabilia, visit the Bonhams website here