Naked ambition

In 2007, at Honda’s behest, I was in the awed audience that witnessed the launch of the Honda CB1000R at the Milan show. I had a front row seat, directly across from a bespectacled lady from Eastern Europe who was halfway between professional photographer and Dita von Teese. No kidding. Many of the more battle weary motorcycle journos were lavishing a lot of film, pixels and eyeballs on her. Not that it seemed to distract her at all. However, when the CB rolled out, it was a no contest. Teese was forgotten in the instant we clapped our eyes on perhaps the most aggressive naked bike ever to come out of Big Red’s factories. Yes, the CB1000R looks that good.

Now, it isn’t that Honda has never built sweet, large displacement nakeds before. That’s what the Hornets were. However, the Hornets as easy to live with as they were, received a fair amount of criticism for being too soft, too easy and in many cases for having no character at all. All the goodness of ex-Fireblade motors seemed to get lost in the transition to becoming a Hornet. Honda showed the first hints of a different approach with the slinky Hornet 600 that they built for the 2007 model year.
At Milan, the sudden aggression stormed on to the smoky stage, a motorcycle that wore sharp edges, the concentration of an aggressive sprinter and as is usual, a Fireblade motor. But what is obvious to me now, after riding one, is that the CB1000R hung a U-turn and left the Hornet building early in life.

How’s that? Well, take the motor for starters. As usual, Honda took a Fireblade motor, this time of 2007 vintage and detuned it. In the process, the motor lost a whopping 50PS. But before you shed a tear, it gained heavily in terms of low- and mid-end torque. So much so, that on the track, the CB felt rapid from tickover, urgent at 2,000rpm, and by 4,000rpm, it was pulling hard. I’d tell you what happened when the revs rose further, but we weren’t allowed to pass the S2000 that was bimbling around ahead of us. The point is that Honda mated the head from the CBF1000 and the 2007 Fireblade motor and created a muscular 125PS inline four that is extremely impressive, very direct and at street speeds, has the brawn to go with its super-aggro looks.