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Posted by Administrator
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Wednesday, 13 December 2006 |
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Page 1 of 3
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Personal Growth by Mike Emery ~ Modern Photography by Kevin Wing
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| Something occurred to me whilst attending this World press intro for the (all) new CBR600RR. It was the fact that this middleweight bike was one of the first intro’s I attended and started my budding journalistic career on. The model has fared well over the years too, it’s fresh looking and considerably slimmer, quite the opposite of my chubby and wrinkled good-self. |
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I witnessed one of the most significant model upgrades back in 2003 and it represented one small step for man but one giant leap for Honda. Remember this is a solid and consistent line that produced a string of Supersport wins in the 80’s and 90’s and had started to suffer (in race trim) by not garnering the Supersport championships in typical HRC conquering fashion. The 2005 later nabbed a make over that included a weight loss program, a set of inverted forks and some radial calipers. Both renditions (2003/2005) were typical Honda but with an angrier side – I loved it and so did you apparently with over 26 billion sales under the Honda belt. |
| It used to be that Honda had their wicked way with that Supersport class until Yamaha introduced their revised R6 in 2003 and Kawasaki their ZX6R, between Jamie Hacking and Tommy Hayden the class has been owned by those two riders for the last four years. Make no bones about it, and although they’ve been racking up F/X championships, Honda wants to retake this Supersport class and with its 20 year anniversary coinciding with the typical four year development cycle it seemed rude not to give the bike it’s most radical make over yet. |
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First off I better make you all happy knowing this won’t be at the expense of a grumpy bum. Honda knows that they shouldn’t mess around with the bike’s creature comforts so they are not ignored and you regular street guys can still rejoice in the fact that it’s still a very easy bike to get along with and street-ability is not compromised.
All this seems to be a slight contradiction though, with Honda admitting to only 5% of its buyers hitting the track (not literally) on the little six, yet this rendition offers far superior track manners for those 5-percentile. |
Ergonomics have never been an issue for the CBR series and this year’s model has a slightly reshaped seat area that reduces seat height somewhat and a 10mm raised clip-on in an effort to get the weight off of your wrists.
Ultimately this bike was indeed pretty comfortable, and for a big guy on a little bike, I always felt in it, rather than on it. My thighs grumbled a little at the end of the day, so the seat peg relationship might be compromised a little (was that a flip-flop?). |
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