Hey Guys,
Steve's right. They did do them in 1988. I received the '88 brochure I won on eBay Australia in the post yesterday, so will scan it in over the weekend and post it on the site. For you guys who can't wait, here's the link to the auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....473751422&rd=1
More importantly, what this means though is that it is almost 100% likely that Honda did actually produce the 1985 ATC500R that was spoken about on this site earlier in the year. If any of you recall, this was the post that spoke about the Owners Manuals listings on a number of OEM parts supplier's websites. To check it out, go to the interactive parts page at www.servicehonda.com and type in 31HA. What you will see is an owners manual listing containing not only the 1987 ATC250R and 1987 ATC350X (which we are now almost certain they produced), but also listings that we all dismissed as mere typos for none other than the 1988 ATC250ES (that we now know for sure existed) and more interestingly, the 1985 ATC500R.........Check it out for yourselves! Makes you wonder doesn't it??????
The disappointing thing is that all the manuals for the above mentioned bikes are listed as discontinued, so we can't even see what the 500R looked like. I guess we'll just have to wait for something to pop up on eBay which it will more than likely do at some point.
Cheers,
Jez