The Air Jordan 4 RM in the Motorsports colorway runs white, smoke grey, black and red, and the name is doing a lot of work it has not earned. The original Air Jordan 4 Motorsport is a blue shoe. It has always been a blue shoe. This one shares a nickname with it and almost nothing else, which is worth saying out loud before anyone buys it expecting the pair they remember. An earlier version of this post said the red accents tie the shoe back to the original Motorsports lineage. They do not.
The story underneath the name is better than the shoe. Michael Jordan owned and ran a professional motorcycle racing team for a decade. Michael Jordan Motorsports was founded in 2004 and raced in AMA Pro Road Racing, primarily the Superbike class, fielding riders including Roger Lee Hayden, Danny Eslick and Jake Zemke. Its best championship result was third in the 2010 AMA Superbike standings. The team folded after the 2013 season when its title sponsor, the National Guard, declined to renew, a decision team vice president Kreig Robinson confirmed to Cycle News that October. Ten seasons, one podium finish in the standings, and a shutdown driven by a sponsor walking away. Nike creative director Mark Smith designed the team’s race suits and the original Motorsport sneakers as part of the same branding program, which is a designer credit almost no sneaker write-up carries.
The original itself has a muddled record. JustFreshKicks dates the first Air Jordan 4 Motorsport to 2006. Resale marketplaces and the sneaker press that covered its general release both label style code 308497-117 as a 2017 shoe. The likeliest explanation is that an early team pair preceded the retail release by years, which is how most Jordan Brand racing product worked, but nothing on Nike’s site settles it and this post is not going to invent a year to make the timeline tidy. What is not in dispute is the color. The original is white, game royal and black.
The RM is not a Retro and the difference matters more than the colorway does. Nike’s own product copy for the RM line describes a flexible cage wrapping the wing, eyestay and heel elements, built for comfort and durability while keeping the heritage silhouette, with Max Air in the heel. What Nike never does is say what RM stands for. There is no brand definition anywhere on its site, and the guesses circulating in the sneaker press are guesses. Style code IB8052-100 is confirmed by both outlets that covered this pair, at $150, which undercuts the $155 that current RM colorways list at on Nike.com today and sits well under a standard Air Jordan 4 Retro. An earlier version of this post carried no price at all and called the shoe an RM PRM. Nike has published no page for this style code, so the PRM suffix is not something anyone can verify.
The reason to pay attention to the RM line at all is what it says about where Jordan Brand thinks the 4 is going. The Retro has been priced up steadily and released constantly, and there is a ceiling on how many $200 pairs of the same shoe a person will buy. The RM is the response, a cheaper 4 with a modern build for people who want the shape without the collector tax. That is a reasonable idea, and the Motorsports naming is where it goes wrong. Borrowing equity from a beloved colorway and then not delivering that colorway is the kind of move that costs a line credibility with exactly the buyers it needs. Compare it to how the brand handled the Tour Yellow and Comic releases, both of which carried names that matched what was on the shoe.
On price, $150 against a Retro that has run from roughly $155 up past $200 depending on the makeup makes the RM the cheapest route into a 4 that Jordan Brand currently offers. That is the whole argument for it. Whether it holds value is a different question, and the RM line’s short history gives no real answer yet.
Release timing is the part this post is not going to state as fact. Sneaker Bar Detroit put it in spring 2025 and JustFreshKicks put it in summer 2025, neither with a specific day, and Nike never published a page for IB8052-100. It does not appear on Nike.com now. So the honest position is that the reported window has passed, retail availability is unconfirmed, and resale is the likely route. Confirmed details are style code IB8052-100 and a $150 price. More of the model is in our Air Jordan 4 hub and the wider Air Jordan archive.
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Source: Packershoes
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